The Gamer Chronicles
by crossfire922
Summary: David Gale is the son of a Faunus Huntress who now resides in Atlas. He received no Faunus traits and was not interested in being a hunter, until one day his semblance called The Gamer awoke. After harsh training from his mother he entered Atlas Academy only to find even greater challenges and dangers ahead. These are the Chronicles of The Gamer.
1. Chapter 1 The Gamer

**This is my first fanfiction. I have written some other original stories elsewhere before but I got hooked on RWBY and The Gamer quite early and only became aware of fanfiction recently. I became inspired to write a version of The Gamer that makes more sense since I hate the universe it is set in and I greatly enjoy the fighting elements of RWBY. Plus I wanted to pick something that was not already heavily defined like Bleach and Naruto. I know there are already a bunch of stories on RWBY and The Gamer but I thought i'd tackle my slice of remnant up in Atlas.**

* * *

The Gamer Chronicles

* * *

Chapter 1

* * *

I stepped out of the tall domed building into the cold and felt the wind blow past me. Winters in Atlas were always so cold. I walked down the snow covered sidewalk back towards the dorms. Arriving at the entrance, I scanned my scroll to open the door. The dorms are a wide building that stretches on for ages. It houses every student that attends Atlas academy. Stepping into the building and its embracing warmth, I proceeded through the marble halls towards my team's dorm room passing other students as I go. I was new to Atlas academy having only been here a few weeks. I originally came from a small nomadic tribe located a distance from the outskirts of Atlas but overnight everything changed. One moment I was learning from my mother how to handle the necessary duties of one my age when Grimm descended in hordes unseen previously. Looking back now it was probably the rampant fear after half our warriors had fallen ill due to a disease running through the camp. With our warriors out of commission and new heights of emotions to draw the Grimm this was an inevitable conclusion. Still to Atlas credit and the reason my family now resides there they immediately sent aid. James Ironwood himself led a group of hunters and a sizeable group of robots to defeat the Grimm. While not enough to save everyone many were saved that would have otherwise been lost. Later on I discovered that the primary reason for them acting was because we had wandered too closely and summoned too many Grimm for them to ignore. That so many Grimm so close to the border would have undoubtedly sparked fear in Atlas and simply caused a repeat of the situation there. So Atlas superiors immediately had acted and eradicated all the Grimm there. While their motives were ulterior I am still grateful they saved who they did.

I lived with my mother for a time and we managed alright. She is a skilled hunter and offered her services to Atlas in order to provide for us. Oh and I forgot to mention she's a Faunus. None of her traits carried over to myself and visually you cannot tell I am part Faunus. The only oddity is that my eyes are a bit different and seem to have superior vision from the average human. My mother however, stands out like a sore thumb. She is a cat type Faunus and has enough traits to stand out in a crowd of Faunus. Considering my Father's absence from our lives since my birth it was challenging at first for us to survive. Thankfully Atlas did not discriminate due to a sudden shortage of hunters fighting off a horde of Grimm and then we had a place to stay in Atlas, a life, and food. We continued this life until I decided to become a Hunter. Really it was forced upon me rather than chosen as my semblance was quite unique and I felt doing anything else would be boring. I awoke to my aura while we fled the Grimm and nearly died three times. Then my semblance several years later as I retreated from the world for a while. Being the son of a Faunus that stood out so much was rough. Atlas was full of discrimination and people made sure to brand me as an outsider just because my mother was a Faunus even if I did not have the traits. It was a rough life and I made sure to avoid people who knew of me. Even still if you looked close enough at my eyes you felt something was wrong and it happened more times than I like to recall.

Arriving at the room I opened the door with a motion of my scroll. Seeing it was empty I sighed. I did not know how to treat my teammates. They did not know about my Faunus blood since I did not talk about my family or circumstances. My mother had cautioned me on this stating "The discrimination of Atlas is thick and deep. Young students are prone to behave how their parents tell them with regards to Faunus. In that case we will take advantage of this. Conceal your identity and tell no one of your blood until you cannot hide it any further or you obtain people you trust." And thus I did. It was really simple actually. I just didn't talk about my past ever. Who were my parents? I acted the part of the rebellious kid who wanted to abandon them and leave them behind forever. After a few days of this the questions stopped coming and I was glad. I needed to take a shower and remove all this tension. I had been training in the training room for the past couple hours. I had to say the best part of Atlas academy was they had an unlimited number of robots for you to pummel as you honed your skills. As I passed the bathroom mirror I paused to look at myself.

I'd call myself a pretty average guy physically maybe slightly tall around 6'1". I had brown hair, blue-green eyes and had plenty of muscles. One thing my mother had done before I applied was train me until I thought I would die twice over. But it had worked. I had lazed around until my Semblance awoke and when I realized how boring my life had suddenly become I told my mother everything. She responded with constant training to catch me up to my peers who had already spent years training. My gaze drifted upwards as I stared at what was above my head.

The Gamer  
LV12 David Gale

I've been The Gamer for a few years. I knew from my video gaming experience that killing stuff raises my level and I immediately had wanted to do so… However my mother had different plans. When I told her about my development she immediately forbade me from killing anything to level up. Instead she had me exercising 18 hours a day to raise my stats. So after three and a half years of raising stats it turned out like this.

Name: David Gale  
Class: The Gamer  
Level: 12  
HP: 8900  
MP: 6600

STR: 99  
VIT: 87  
DEX: 72  
INT: 62  
WIS: 65  
LUK: 0

Points: 55  
MONEY: 2000 Lien

Despite exercising for 22,932 hours, yes I counted every hour of that torture, the stats would only go that high. Every ten levels the time required to raise them increased dramatically. Ultimately at the end my mom wanted my strength to hit 100 before I left and so after hundreds of hours on that stat alone we gave up and switched completely towards strategy after raising my other stats over 70. She drilled tactics, history and knowledge endlessly until my INT and WIS were over 50. Raising these over 50 gave me massive benefits towards controlling aura and directing its flow.

When I first looked at my Aura skill after I gained the Gamer, I was so mad.

[Awakened Aura (Passive & Active) LV1 EXP:0:00%]  
 **Aura** is the manifestation of one's soul. Your soul seems to be lacking though.  
Aura is an ability that all those with a soul can use, at least with enough practice. A person with a strong Aura may radiate bright colors when using it.  
Increases STR by 5%.  
Increases DEX by 5%.  
Increases VIT by 5%.  
Increases VIT recovery rate by 5%.  
Increases stamina recovery rate by 5%.  
Enables the learning of beginner Aura techniques.

So what if I had lazed around for years after the horror at my village, was that really a reason to say my soul was lacking?! I sighed as I remembered. Feeling melancholy I took my shower getting rid of all the built up sweat.

Feeling rejuvenated I got out of the dresser and dressed. Just as I finished the door suddenly opened and in walked two members of my team.

The Stoic One  
LV22 Jonathan Fisk

The Rascal  
Lv20 Aaron Fisk

"David." Jon spoke solemny.

"Sup" I replied.

It was now just before dinner time so naturally my teammates were returning to the dorm to prepare for dinner.

Aaron nodded at me before him and Aaron moved over to their side of the room and changed for dinner. On free days like today you can wear whatever you wish but for meals you were expected to be in the dark grey standard uniform. As you can see our team's relationships were quite strained. We never practiced together and honestly it wasn't all my fault. The real problem was the girl on our team.

At this point the time for dinner began so I got up and prepared to leave. "Shall we walk together?" I voiced towards the brothers.

"Sure" They agreed.

As we strode down the hall towards the dining room I saw more and more students congregating. After a few minutes we arrived and stood in line to receive our food. One thing to say about academy food was that it was horrible. Some sort of military slop with vegetables on the side and a single piece of meat. They claimed it was nutritious but my observe skill told otherwise.

Observe

A Slop of Food

Contains all the necessary nutrients to survive but nothing more. Eat all your vegetables or you will regret it later on.

So naturally I ate my veggies even if they tasted like card board. While it probably did not matter to my gamer body I did not actually know how much my body had changed. I had heard some students were petitioning that they take over food duty in exchange for credits and when that failed they begged just to cook instead. It seems they were pretty desperate to eat anything else. As we were served our slop we moved towards our usual eating table and saw our final member already sitting there chowing down.

?  
Serena Heartwing  
LV?

She was strong that I could tell from a glance. How strong I did not know. I had seen her fighting against spider droids that were insanely strong at level 49 and beating them easily. It made me think her level was easily in the sixties but I couldn't be sure until I leveled up. Despite this Serena was about as friendly as you would expect. She thought we were useless, which we sort of were, and the student rejects. Now granted that I was level 12 was a decision rather than actual weakness and my stats would place me actually far, far stronger but I still did not compare to Serena. Maybe if I invested my 55 stat points remaining but my mother had cautioned that I not use those until I had a foe I couldn't beat and needed the boost. In the meantime she said to train just as hard and level my stats. So I did.

"Hello Serena" I spoke. She nodded to acknowledge my presence and returned to eating. And this was how all our meal times went. She arrived first ate quickly and left just as quickly. When she had complained about the team members she had received in front of us she was rebuked harshly and given no explanations. I found out later from hearing the other tables talk about her but she apparently came from a Faunus family somewhere back and it had tarnished her family's reputation as they had actively helped the White Fang during the war. So of course in this academic situation they placed her with random people with no history in Atlas. This was an especially bad year to join as most of the prominent hunter's kids were just entering Atlas and they would not tolerate her being teamed with them. So in the end she was stuck with us till she graduated and she was making it clear she wanted no part in this. Whenever our team exercises started she utilized her teleporting Semblance and popped over to the robots and brawled until they were disabled leaving us far behind. Her superior speed and power were so great that by the time we arrived she would have basically finished. But did this change anything when the professors saw this? Not at all. It seems Faunus prejudice ran way harder than I could have imagined considering what my mother had taught me. This was the actual main reason I was still 12 after a week considering the robots were generally 20 at the academy. And so we ate in silence and finished quickly. Serena left first to return to the room and then we followed shortly after. We settled into another tense night as Aaron and Jon chatted amongst themselves and occasionally brought me in but was quickly silenced whenever Serna glared at them for being too loud. Which was often.

Finally fed up with the atmosphere I turned off my light and went to sleep.

The next morning we had Grimm cleaning duty. Basically how it worked is every day a team would go out fight Grimm with a professor to monitor and give feedback when necessary and today was our day. The purpose they said was to gain real experience against Grimm and to practice unity. However for us and our first time it was nothing but a blur as Serena popped around obliterating Grimm while we stood dumb founded at her speed. That left a very black spot on our record as we were the laughing stock of the school. The Faunus girl who outstrips 3 men.

As we walked there I said "Jon. Aaron. Let's try and split off from Serena the moment we hit the ground and keep enough distance that we can actually make strides towards fighting against Grimm. Even if she is lightning fast if we are far enough we will not enter her zone of devastation."

"Agreed" the brother's replied. "But we will take the lead. I haven't been terribly impressed by your skills in class duels."

"Fine" I Grumbled. While it was true to be honest my previous opponents were the best in class the third best and the fifth best. With at least fifty students in our class everyone thought I was the absolute worst since I could be defeated so easily. Oh it burned too cause their levels were around forty and even one victory would have given me so many experience points.

We collectively moved to the pad that the transports were stored on and bored when the teacher arrived. We flew a short distance away to where the Grimm congregated in numbers manageable by students.

Once on the ground we separated leaving Serena to fight her horde alone as we began tackling the other Grimm as a team of three. It was fairly standard as Jon used a duel scimitar type style that had guns equipped in the hilt allowing him to also deal damage from a distance. Meanwhile Aaron used a spear that could stretch like a whip with a sharp point at the end. I'd seen him come out of the shower and saw the scars that showed how dangerous his weapon was.

Then there was myself. I used a Katana type blade that also had a gun on the hilt in case I needed to lay down distance damage. As we approached the Grimm 5 immediately charged us as more started circling. While I had not been leveling I still spared with my mother every day until my Sword mastery was over level 70. I could make a strike from any posture and in midair if necessary. The only reason I lost in the class room was because their speed was so outlandishly fast that I could not bring my 99 strength to bear. When I had compared my stats to others in class I clearly had the highest strength I could see outside the few whose levels were too high for me to see. Which is why I had been training my dexterity like mad the past few weeks raising it to 79.

Amusingly neither Aaron nor Jon had unlocked their semblance. I had wondered if this was the reason for their levels being at least 10-15 behind everyone else in the class but I did not know since I had not had a chance to check if everyone in class had a semblance unlocked. Naturally I kept quiet about my ability and was categorized like them.

At this point the five charging Beowolves split off two on each brother and one towards me. I scoffed at the unfairness of all that XP going towards them when I was desperate for XP after not being allowed to hunt for so long.

Then I sprinted forward taking a stance and ducking at the Beowolf leapt towards me. I flash my blade out executing a high speed slash using the skill Speed Slash that I had generated by performing the same movement over and over. It allowed me to strike with 200% greater speed as long as it started from the scabbard. It also dealt 200% more damage but since it could only be used in one on one fights as putting my sword back into the scabbard constantly posed a challenge it was a great opener. Like a flash my sword sliced through the air splitting cleanly through the Beowolf as collapsed being me and begin fading away.

You have leveled up!

I smiled evilly. THIS is what I have been waiting for! For four years I have trained and today I am taking my first steps towards becoming a full-fledged hunter.

Spying my teammates they were having equal success versus the beowolves but not instantly killing them like myself. But I did not have time to worry about them as the circling pack noticed their missing comrade five more beowolves veered towards me fangs snarling. I dove left before their encirclement took shape and attacked the left side viciously swiping downwards with my katana from the left as the beowolf howled at my sudden lunge. This was another skill I made up sword dash which basically just let me slash 100% faster with 100% more damage as I dashed 10-30 feet forward quickly. Originally this would have consumed mana far too quickly but now it was not a concern. These skills were so high leveled and my INT and WIS were grinded so high that I could swing sword dash about 200 times before needing to worry about my mana. Considering it was probably the most basic move any swordsman would learn I was not surprised as its growth and spam ability. In an instant my left slice cleanly moved through the beowolf like butter spinning my body towards the next wolf charging right behind him. At this moment I activated lunge which simply stabbed forward with a 150% bonus to attack strength. I closed the distance to the beowolf and stabbed hard watching it go limp as its HP dropped like a rock. Glancing right I noticed the three remaining beowolves dashing towards myself as I pulled my sword out and took a stance.

As soon as I took a stance I activated field which basically was created after years of sparing with my mother who was insanely faster than myself. It increased my senses and allowed me to detect anything that entered a few feet beyond my swords range. However it was only as fast as sensitive as my dexterity and never really allowed me to do more than block my mother's first hit. However, if I could handle a counterattack it boosted all counters by 200% damage. It was an active skill requiring MP a second drain but only reduced my total fighting time by about half when it was on which made.

Which the additional awareness flooding in I sensed the moment the beowolf entered my field and swiped at it instantly as I placed my right foot forward crouching towards the side of where it would have stuck. The sword instantly cleaved the beowolf in half as it crashed past me to the ground. Then the second beowolf entered my range on my right and I brought my sword back across his path as I dashed to the right of him. As I confirmed his HP hit zero I felt the final beowolf come into range. It had somehow circled to my right side making me groan in annoyance having gotten caught up too much in fighting.

However this did not concern me at all as I activated full swipe and spun like a rocket cleaving the approaching wolf in half. Basically this skill allowed me to spin in case I needed my sword on the other side of myself. It dealt 150% additional damage and of course cut everything along its path as well. With the final beowolf dropping to the group at my feet I glanced towards my teammates. They had been assaulted by an extra two wolves but were now finishing the final one. Then I glanced across the valley towards Serena. I could just barely follow her movements with my eyes as she popped from place to place stabbing beowolves and the occasional ursa minor lurking around the area. Feeling quite exhilarated I motioned towards the additional beowolves at the crest of the hill and my teammates and myself pressed forward clearing them and the additional dozen over the hill.

After we finished clearing the hill I heard a horrible crash from across the valley. As I sped up the hill to see what caused it I saw a huge ursa major slam on the ground where I presume Serena must have just been. Initially I was going to ignore the fight when something caught my eye as odd about it. Not only was it larger then usual but it had a title and a name.

He who eats life  
Lv 63 Zagul

* * *

Review,favorite or follow if you liked this! Give me feedback on anything you think needs improvement!


	2. Chapter 2 The Team

**Well I went to see the movie Scorch trials today and it left me totally on edge after all that suspense so I came back and finished the second chapter. After this I think David will need to grind and come up with some real skills... Maybe raid the library?**

* * *

Chapter 2

* * *

Boom! Another crashed ripped the area as I saw Zagul swing at Serena missing narrowly and sending an entire tree rocking backwards. It had some amazing power on it that's for sure. I also noted the armor on it was much fuller then even an ursa major in the pictures I had seen. Using observe I could see quite a bit.

Name: Zagul  
Title: He Who Eats Life  
Level: 63  
HP: 129000  
MP: 2500

STR: 160  
VIT: 129  
DEX: 80  
INT: 25  
WIS: 10  
LUK: 0

 **A significantly older ursa than your standard ursa who surpassed the mindless state to awaken to a slightly sentient state. He grows stronger and smarter as he feasts on the minds of sentient creatures.**

That… Was plenty explanative for what I was seeing. He grew stronger by eating humans and awakened like the goliaths did. I was quite surprised that there was an awakened ursa so close to Atlas but maybe that was why they had brought us here. As I glanced towards the teacher he simply was sitting on a folding chair sipping a cup of coffee reading his scroll. I could not tell if he cared for the students under his care or not… Then another crash and the ursa sent a chunk of log flying down towards the crevice in the valley between us. Except… That wasn't a log it was Serena! With a quick observe I could see exactly what happened. She had attempted to teleport again and possibly had not had enough aura remaining as she definitely did not have any right now. Closing the observe window I sprinted down the slope towards the downed Serena.

"Aaron! Jon! Back me up!" I shouted over my shoulder hoping they would hear. In the moments I sprinted towards Serena the ursa leaped towards her with a vengeance clearing the space faster than I could normally. So I focused all the MP I could spare into my legs and accelerated forward. Making a quick glance I knew I would make to Serena first by mere seconds. I needed to hit this thing as hard I could and knock it away or it would undoubtedly get us before I could pull her free. Glancing back I knew Aaron and Jon were still far behind me with an expression of hopelessness on their faces.

Gripping my sword I focused all the remaining MP I had leaving enough to survive if this failed and it hit me. Focusing it through the blade as an extension of my body, I did not stop when I reached Serena instead I leapt forward gaining a bit more momentum as I slashed at the ursa on the left as hard as I could. The blow forced the ursa off course causing it to hit ground on the side of Serena and tumble down the hill as one of its legs seemed to fail it. As this point with all my momentum eaten by the strike on the ursa I spun back towards Serena still lying completely still and checked her HP. It did not seem to be decreasing or in jeopardy and so I immediately rushed towards her side. I glanced at the ursa, who had fallen down the slope a ways, as he started to climb back up. At that moment Jon and Aaron reached my side.

"What now?" Aaron asked.

Ignoring the popup windows indicating new actions creating skills, I considered for a moment that ursa still had around 100000 health left. Which means my strike which ate almost everything I had left me basically depleted and even though the ursa has around the same DEX I did not think I could dodge those swipes it was making at Serena. This meant the only way I would be able to defeat it is either put my points into DEX or STR hoping for a one hit kill. Considering how the level difference was so great I doubt a one hit kill would work. This left speed and teamwork and attempting to survive.

"Give me ten seconds to regain the strength I spent on that attack and keep it busy. Then give it your best hit to stun it and I will pounce again and then play the decoy for you two to land some shots." I replied.

Hopefully my next hit would do enough damage to impair its movement further so we would win a long term fight. They nodded sagely and I left their actions to them.

"Go!" I shouted as I called up the status screen to input my stats.

Name: David Gale  
Class: The Gamer  
Level: 13  
HP: 8900  
MP: 6600  
STR: 99  
VIT: 87  
DEX: 79  
INT: 62  
WIS: 65  
LUK: 0

Point: 60  
MONEY: 2500 Lien

I decided to raise STR to 101 and see if it gives bonus skills like it did with my other stats at 50. Raising STR to 101, a flurry of pings popped up at I noticed three new skills. However not having enough time to check in this brief moment I immediately spammed the crud out of the DEX increase button until it had eaten all my points. Then I applied and waited. Unlike raising stats through training this was exhilarating and filling. Instantly I felt a huge shift and new passives presumably taking hold.

Counting in my head I knew there was only two seconds until they would stun the ursa and expect me to be there. Before even the notifications finished popping up I blazed forward like a rocket despite not pouring any MP into my legs. If I were to compare my speed now to when I chucked all my MP into my legs it would be like I had super charged that event. Something was making me wicked fast and I did not have time to look now. I also could see visibly that time was moving slower now. While I knew I was moving much faster my perception had increased drastically and I could see where Aaron was slamming the ursa with his best shot to disorient it.

With the added time for study I determined the best course was to strike its right arm since it was slightly away from its body and neither brother would be in my path. I immediately pushed on more speed for the strike. Not able to glance at my MP bar I summoned whatever power I could into my sword which felt like a ridiculous amount for some reason and I sensed I still had plenty for my aura shield. I activated sword dash amping up my speed another notch and increasing my attack power and swung hard at the ursas right arm. My sword connected perfectly with the arm and met incredible resistance. It was like I was slicing through what I imagine reinforced steel would feel like. I felt like my sword would rip out of my hands but I held firm and then I was past the ursa watching an arm sail past me. Instantly the ursa roared like no Grimm I have ever heard. If you thought Grimm wanted to eat you on an average day, well, this ursa most definitely proved me wrong.

A new skill has been created through action.  
Detect Bloodlust (Passive) 0.00%  
Due to coming into contact with enormous bloodlust you are now able to detect it in your average everyday life.

Immediately I felt a shiver down my spine and leapt away from the ursa. Where I had been moments before became a huge crater as debris flew towards me. I glanced towards the ursa's HP as I steadied myself during the landing and saw that the removal of an arm had cut its HP by another 20%. Then I glanced at my MP bar and saw it still had exactly the same amount as before. Surprisingly, my HP bar had actually dropped a ways despite not taking any damage! While I was not in any danger HP wise, I did not think I could afford to take any more damage or this would get seriously more dangerous.

As the ursa stumbled lacking what was its forward left leg I saw Aaron and Jon both hit the ursa hard with strikes that left bone shattering noise. Then the ursa seemed to realize it was now a three legged animal and began moving as if that was completely normal albeit a bit slower than before but it still gave me significant goosebumps as some sort of black fluid flowed out of the wound like a stream splattering on the ground. As the ursa charged me I activated field preparing to dodge the moment it swung and counter attack. The instant it was in my range I dodged sharply out of its charging path and dropped my sword to slice it as it ran. The ursa tried to adjust but I had moved to the tip of my swords range in case it would be able to… and it nearly did hit me despite that. However because it got so close and still missed me my sword sank in deep as it carved its way through the ursa and I held on to my sword with all my might.

CRITICAL HIT flashed as the ursa passed my sword and I knew it had taken some hefty damage from that one. Still not wanting to let up the assault I dashed forward activating sword dash as the ursa had just managed to stop. I instantly closed the distance and sliced hard along the ursa's back leaving a deep mark there. The ursa viciously tried to smack me with its hind legs and I nimbly dodged out of its path. The effort seemed to be becoming significantly easier for me as I believed I was getting the hang of the new speed I could produce. Glancing at the ursa's bar I could see it still had around 30% left but it had some nasty status effects applied like missing arm and broken spine symbol whatever that meant. I mean if it really had broken its spine how is it standing up and charging me AGAIN? This time as the ursa charged me, I also charged the ursa and leapt over its head far higher then I meant to as it plowed through where I had just been. It tried to stop but well it was going downhill and even if it thought three legs was plenty apparently its physical mass disagreed and it went tumbling. As soon as my feet hit the ground I sprinted down the hill and activated lunge. Checking my MP bar it had recovered a decent ways and my HP had also risen three fourths of the way to maximum to my great surprise.

Jon and Aaron then immediately plowed some hard hits on the ursa's backside as it turned towards me with a vicious glint in its eye.

Meanwhile I fed power into lunge and increased my speed as high as it could go. The ursa lurched forward as it sustained the blows from Jon and Aaron. Then my sword connected with the ursa's head cleanly stabbing all the way to the hilt. But I did not let up there! I immediately poured aura freely into my sword as I sliced the ursa like a good steak freeing my weapon and leaping backwards out of range of… Nothing as the ursa completely collapsed. Panting very hard I checked its HP bar and saw it hit 0 finally.

You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!

I blinked wildly at the spam of level up screens. I guess I could understand considering how I had just slain something fifty levels above me. In reality the only reason I was still 13 was because I had to level up and training stats all day just did not increase my level for me. While for other people levels seemed to be an approximation of their general strength. Sighing deeply in relief I glanced towards Jon and Aaron, who just looked completely dumbfounded that we had managed to kill this beast. Then I checked Serena and saw that she had actually woken up and was watching us with her mouth open. Finally I looked at the scum of a teacher who was still reading his darn scroll! Safe training my butt he really does not care about us at all! Despite this I calmed myself and walked over to Serena.

"Are you alright?" I asked inquisitively.

She nodded. "Yes… How.. Did you do that?"

I frowned deeply. I mean sure it was a legitimate question since I am pretty sure that was pretty bloody far above anything I could have ever done before today. "uh" I stammered "I guess the adrenaline hit me".

"Ah…" she murmured.

"Heeey! We helped too you know!" Aaron protested.

"Indeed you did!" I agreed readily hoping to divert attention "Without you guys I most definitely would not have been able to land any hits. If my first strike had not removed that ursa's arm…" I shuddered.

"I know what you mean." Jon uttered "that ursa was so fast and kept moving despite losing a limb as if it was a minor annoyance. I mean it's a freakin limb you would think he would care about it!"

"When we get back to a teacher who actually cares about us…" I spoke while glaring in the direction of the still oblivious teacher, "I will totally pick his brain about today. I have never heard this from my mom or any teachers!"

Sheathing my sword I turned back towards Serena and offered my hand to help her up. "Is anything broken?" I inquired.

Frowning slightly at trying to stand she replied "No I seem to be intact."

"That's good" Jon replied "When I got to you, you had nada no aura and frankly you seemed to be out like a light. How much of that fight did you see anyways?"

"hmm" She mused "I came to right as I saw David here leap over the charging ursa. Then I noticed that it was missing an arm and I honestly thought that the teacher had stepped in and made it into a training exercise. Only to glance up and see him sipping coffee, blink our direction, and then return to his scroll. It was then I realized one of you had actually severed its limb that was so solid I could not even dent it."

That actually surprised me since she was a ? to me and significantly stronger than I was. Speaking of which I could see her level now. Using observe I gleamed the answer I sought.

Name: Serena Heartwing  
Title: The Girl Who Leaps  
Level: 65  
HP: 2700/5200  
MP: 1500/10200  
STR: 35  
VIT: 52  
DEX: 70  
INT: 140  
WIS: 91  
LUK: 0

* * *

 **P.S. I'm still mulling over all the skill values and stuff if somethings exceedingly wrong I'm probably going to go back and edit things for balance sake since I frankly have no idea how strong everything should be.**

* * *

Review,favorite or follow if you liked this! Give me feedback on anything you think needs improvement!


	3. Chapter 3 The Plan

**Well this is going pretty smoothly along the path I expected. I think the skills are decently balanced after a thorough review considering David trained for over four years before I introduced him. I know that I skipped out on the INT bonuses from 50 but in The Gamer it was something like medium mana capacity and merely gave a bonus to mana size. Not really that exciting and not sure if I want to stick with it since I am taking him down a warrior's path.**

* * *

Chapter 3

* * *

It makes perfect sense why Serena had not been able to defeat the ursa. This girl is quite fast and smart but her strength sucks! It was a bad situation of fast girl met immovable object. By the time Serena had recovered from the ursa battle enough to continue clearing Grimm we were already finished for the day. Taking a quick glance over at the ursa I walked over real quick and checked for item drops. To my delight a few items were behind it out of sight from the others. I scooped them up into my inventory and off I went. So with that concluded we went back up the hill to the teacher and departed back to the school. When we arrived at the dorm room we communally collapsed on our beds.

"Dibs on first shower" Aaron piped up.

"Isn't this normally where you say Ladies first?" Serena countered.

I noted even though I had blocked the ursa's strike at her apparently the ooze had gotten her and she was covered with it. Then I noticed the smell…

"I vote the smelliest person goes first" I proposed.

Everyone immediately looked at Serena and wrinkled their noses.

Serena scoffed and walked away.

Which was perfect because I wanted to check out my new skills anyways. Calling up my -Skill Book- I began looking it over.

[Sword Dash (ACTIVE) LV63 EXP: 95.2%]  
A skill that dashes forward with 100% increased movement speed and then strikes with 100% additional slashing damage. Something any basic swordsmen would think up. Damage bonus increases as STR and DEX increases.

[Lunge (ACTIVE) LV55 EXP:21.5%]  
Lunge forward a short distance and stab the opponent! The most basic sword skill that even a baby would think up! Deals 150% bonus to stabbing damage. Damage bonus increases as STR increases.

[Aura Shield (ACTIVE) LV72 EXP:26.5%]  
By transforming your aura into a hardened shield you can maintain a solid defense that is extra resilient against all attacks. Usage requires 10MP/s.

[PHYSICIAL ENDURANCE (PASSIVE) LV29 EXP:2.01%]  
The body's durability increases and you take less damage 32% decrease in damage from physical attacks

A Gamer's Mind (PASSIVE) LV MAX  
Allows the user to calmly and logically think things through. Allows peaceful state of mind. Immunity to psychological status effects.

A Gamer's Body (PASSIVE) LV MAX  
Grants a body that allows for the user to live the real world like a game.

[The Body of the Strong (PASSIVE) LV 1 EXP:67.01%]  
Due to obtaining strength over 100 points you have become stronger than the average person making your body sturdier and more powerful.

25% Attack Bonus to all physical attacks  
25% Defensive Bonus from all strikes  
STR increases by 10%  
VIT increase by 10%

So this explained my sudden increase in attack power. I really did not think I could have dealt this much damage normally.

[The Warrior's Aura (PASSIVE) LV 1 EXP 22.01%]  
Due to obtaining strength over 100 points you have gained the ability to convert your HP into MP. While some question the wisdom of this action it has become absolutely necessary for those who do not practice and train their aura and instead focus on their muscles. Initial conversion rate: 1 HP per 1MP will improve as level increases.

STR now increases MP at a rate of 100 per point.

Well well. This explains why I lost HP in that fight and felt my MP charge. While I was not sure how I felt about lowering my HP during fights I knew I could always cover for it with a significant enough MP buffer and since STR now raises my MP as well it more than covers for the loss!

[Giant's Strike (ACTIVE) LV 1 EXP 0.00%]  
Strike as if you were a Giant of a man! The Skill increases the damage of all strikes by 300%. Damage bonus increases as STR increases.

This is going to come in super handy. I can attach this on to any strike and boost its damage enormously. I wonder if I can combo skills and stack their bonuses upon each other.

[Sword Weapon Mastery (PASSIVE) LV89 EXP:9.01%  
Allows the user to freely handle swords.  
150% increase in attack damage with swords  
20% increase in attack speed with swords

While this is great and all I have still yet to obtain my own sword style and by my own I mean get a bunch of skill books that let me steal someone else's.

[Shadow Step (ACTIVE) LV1 EXP:0.00%]

Through the ardent training and striving to increase your speed you are now able to leave after images as you move. These images appear solid but upon striking fade like a shadow.

Movement speed increased by 100%  
Attack speed increased by 100%  
after images left: 1

I stared at this for a moment blinking and then grinned widely. I could totally wup those guys in class who beat me with this. Combine this with field and I would be able to chain these striking at all my enemies weak spots.

"What are you smirking about over there!" Aaron questioned.

While to outsiders it looked like I was on my scroll I was holding in my hand still smiling randomly would probably be weird.

"Oh I was just thinking I am going to train hard and get some payback for those guys in class that beat me." I responded honestly.

"Ha! You beat them? Have you unlocked your Semblance all of a sudden?"

Trying to put on a bitter smile "No nothing significant I just felt I made some major strides in utilizing my aura today and if I capitalize on that I should be able to keep up with their speed this time and give them a good wack."

"Hmm… You realize those three you had the bad luck to fight all have semblances that raise their speed in one form or another."

"Right which is why I either increase my speed or develop some way to restrict their movements and since I figure speed is always better against Grimm I am developing the speed route and seeing where it leads."

"I see" Aaron nodded sagely. "Well good luck with that."

"Any luck with your semblance?"

Aaron frowned and crossed his arms "Nothing solid I feel it something whatever it is but I can never quite grasp it! So annoying and frustrating. How about you bro? Anything new?"

At this point Jon perked up as if he hadn't been listening to the conversation and said "No."

"I've been meaning to say this Jon but you are quite the conversationalist."

"Ha! That's what I've been trying to tell him!" Aaron replied cackling "He never says much at all and always seems so gloomy."

"Well excuse me for being direct." Jon huffed and returned to his scroll turning his back on Aaron.

"Hey don't be that way I meant it as a joke!" Aaron protested

Letting the siblings bicker I turned back to my Skill book and glanced at Field. It had increased another level at some point and the range increased again. I think it would be very useful when combined with all my movement skills now.

[Field (ACTIVE) lv81 EXP:72.99%]

Through the desperate act of blocking an attack far superior to your capabilities you have gained the ability to sense everything enter within a range of 6m. Be aware that this field is based on your DEX stat and if someone moves faster than you can perceive you will be unable to sense them.

Perception of others rate: 1.5*DEX

I really hoped no student was walking around with more than 205 dexterity. Because if they were I would probably have to spam all my movement bonus skills constantly to just keep up.

[The World of the Fast (PASSIVE) LV1 EXP:7.77%]

By raising your dexterity over 100 you have transcended the average person and entered a new world. You are now able to perceive time as much slower than before and react much faster. This skill's potency will increase as you raise DEX.  
DEX increased by 20%

This probably explains why I was moving over twice as fast as before I put those stats in.

Name: David Gale  
Class: The Gamer  
Title: (EMPTY)  
Level: 23  
HP: 8900+1335  
MP: 6600  
STR: 101+15  
VIT: 87+12  
DEX: 137+47  
INT: 62  
WIS: 65  
LUK: 0

Point: 50  
MONEY: 25000 Lien

Interestingly I noticed a new slot for title. Tapping it I could see the option for apprentice Grimm slayer. Which gives me a 30% increase in offense and defense versus Grimm. Of course I equipped the title. Since it is my only title might as well.

Around this time Serena returned from her shower and the rest of us began alternating into the showers until we were clean. Then when I came out I called a meeting.

"I know we have not been on the best of terms but I think it is clear now that while Serena is definitely the most mobile and probably can beat all of us single handedly, I think it became clear today that certain situations require teamwork and extra muscle." I paused. "I am not sure what was up with that teacher but Serena you could have died today. I made it to you with micro seconds to spare before a claw would have impaled your body and you know what? I do not think anyone would care. With everything I overhear about the situation with our team that other students talk about I think the teachers might actually prefer if we had a training accident."

Serena was silent for a while before responding "My family originally supported the White Fang before the war. The real reason was because my Grandfather had married a Faunus and decided to support their efforts to gain rights. Of course this is extremely unfavorable in Atlas. Citizens of Atlas do not care about Faunus especially with leadership pushing them as animals. In reality the leadership in Atlas want it to stay as it is so that they can keep their precious sources of dust coming in cheap by using the Faunus as cheap labor. While we do not actively support the white fang currently, my family still treats Faunus quite well and this behavior is heavily frowned upon."

I could see Aaron and Jon frowning at what she was saying. It was clear they did not have a closed mind about it but did not look as if they exactly believed it was quite that bad.

"Hmm… My mother is a Faunus" I spoke quietly. "We came from a village outside and when we were wiped out by Grimm moved to Atlas. As you can see I did not carry any visible traits and since we are so new to Atlas it seems the knowledge has not spread. Besides she spends a great deal of time as a hunter on the front lines providing for myself. I think those who knew about her respected her dedication and decided to keep quiet and not cause me anymore trouble. So I can't honestly say this isn't partially my fault as well."

At this Aaron spoke out "If it had not been for you though someone would be dead. No one who risks their life for another can be that bad or have animal selfishness."

"I agree" Jon stated.

"Thanks" I replied.

"While it is probably a combination of situations that gives us the lack of attention, it is something we can change." Serena stated factually.

"How" Aaron asked?

"We become the best. The Vytal festival is in a year. Selections should begin in the next few months and individual competitions to determine the best in the school. Even if you and you (gesturing at Jon and Aaron) cannot win if I win or maybe David takes a high spot it will fundamentally change things for us at this school." Serena stated.

Just as Aaron and Jon looked like they would protest I cut in "Well. I might be able to help with that. Since you guys trusted me with my darkest secret I'll tell you guys about my semblance."

"I thought you did not have a semblance" Aaron cut in

"Well that's what I told everyone. To be honest it's a tad bizarre, unusual and troublesome to explain. So I just avoid it entirely. My semblance is called The Gamer and what that means is that my skills and physical capabilities are displayed to me in terms of stats. As I kill Grimm or defeat students in duels I gain EXP that allows me to grow stronger and then distribute the points from leveling into stats."

Everyone looked at me like I was crazy and did not say a word. Then I sent a party invite to all three of them and they all jumped at the surprise and floating window that moved with them.

Serena coughed loudly and sat back down "Ok so I believe you.. Now… How does this help us?"

"Accept the party invites and I will be able to share XP with our kills evenly if you are within ten levels of myself. Since Aaron and Jon are within ten levels of myself, we should be able to grind the living daylights out of Grimm. I tested this with my Mother and surprisingly when she was partied with me and leveled up herself it gave her stat points. It does not appear to have a distance limitation on the party as when she went on assignment and it still worked." I explained "I do not know how quickly you can grow stronger as that will largely depend upon the Grimm slaying or students defeated but it should definitely help you grow." I finished.

Aaron and Jon looked at each other and nodded. "I think we will take you up on this offer." As they both pressed accept. Serena also accepted and suddenly my party was filled with four people.

"Now for strategy. When we train against robots it also gives us EXP. We should group up every day after class and destroy robots till lights out. Not only is this training to find your semblances but also should help all our growths. I think I might be able to take a spider droid now and they are usually around the high forties which should give us massive EXP each time we beat one."

"I think" Serena interjected "We should keep your semblance secret from all others. Not only is it the most unusual semblance I have ever seen but with all the focus on our team it would not be wise to draw more unwanted attention until we prove ourselves."

"That was my plan" I reaffirmed "I only told you guys because we are teammates and after today I figured it was all or nothing."

Everyone agreed and we broke to go to sleep.

* * *

Review,favorite or follow if you liked this! Give me feedback on anything you think needs improvement!


	4. Chapter 4 The Training

**Just a note that if I forgot book characters need to eat it's probably because I skipped a meal myself. Soo woops. Frankly I'm sorry I just forgot meals altogether. I mean it has been like 2 days without food for the MC at least haha. Yep reviewing the list of things I haven't been doing properly… Let's see if I can do better.**

* * *

Chapter 4

* * *

When they awoke in the morning the sun was shining through the cracks in the curtains. I could tell that it was barely after sunrise and that there were still several hours before class. Looking around at my teammates I could see they were all still fast asleep. I pondered for a moment what our team name was. In all the hissy fit that Serena threw over the team composition we ended up not even attending the naming ceremony. Heck our leader was not even chosen yet! I chuckled to myself at how pathetic our team began. But Despite all these challenges we are going to rise to the top! With that determination I rolled off my bed and dressed quickly and went to the library.

I quickly moved towards the library. I did not see anyone because the buildings are basically empty at this hour and everyone is sleeping. When I reached the library I began going through the rows of books and wondered why it was even open at this hour. Heading towards the Kenjutsu section or maybe it was labeled under swordsmanship? I shrugged and searched for both. Finally locating what I sought, that is books that discussed sword styles that utilized Katana's, I began sifting through using observe on every book. I had not been using observe as much recently since doing so on objects already scanned generated very little EXP and I was often thinking about other things and focusing on other skills. Once observe had reached level 89 it just did not want to level the same way as before and left me quite annoyed. I did make sure to use it on every new object once though as this seemed to generate lots of EXP for it. Finally I found a usable skill book. Snatching it up it said, you've obtained the Skill Book [Kenjutsu Basic Forms] would you like to learn the skill? I immediately pressed yes before remembering it eats the book and poof the book was gone followed by a flash of light as I suddenly had knowledge of all of Kenjutsu's basic forms. I closed all the window notifications for now for the new skills as I looked around to make sure no one saw me before I proceeded forward searching for more skill books.

I ended up finding two more on Kenjutsu and 3 on Iadio. At this point I placed them in my inventory. Ding! A skill has been created through repeated action.

[Steal (ACTIVE) LV1 EXP:0.00%]  
Used since ancient times by the masters of the night to claim what they wanted without being seen. You can now touch an item to steal and simply activate the skill for it to be placed in to your inventory.

I really did not know how I felt about this. I mean the only reason I was just taking the books is because I had long ago checked that these were all copies easily replaceable. Not to mention if push came to shove I can just write out the book since I now contained the knowledge. Putting aside the morality question the final thing I was here to find is a swift movement aura based skill. Despite my repeated attempts during the battle and then afterwards at practice it would not make a skill for me and I kept having to manually do it. I knew something was wrong or inefficient and therefore it was ignoring my puny attempts but it still irked me. I figured if I learned what was wrong here I could improve in future attempts at making my own skills. Finding the aura section I swiftly went down the line ignoring the skill books I did not care much for like… Growing hair using aura… Really? Finding the books that covered movement speed I quickly sorted through their uses and benefits and found one close to what I was doing but would be flexible to use in my attacks. Then I also grabbed one for extreme long distance bursts and was not really suited to fighting for long term as it seemed like a mana beast. I quickly stored both and began to leave when something caught my eye. The book said it was a guide to healing using aura. At first I was going to pass then I remembered how inconvenient waiting for Serena to recover had been. So I promptly grabbed it using steal and off I went. I went to the training room which was really like a small warehouse with high ceilings as opposed to a formal training room and I confirmed it was empty. I imagined they had to make it this tall for the spider droids and whatever else happened here. Then I grabbed all my books and absorbed their knowledge.

[iaido Weapon Mastery (PASSIVE) LV1 EXP:0.01%  
The knowledge any basic user of iaido would know.  
50% increase in attack damage with Katana's  
10% increase in attack speed with Katana's  
100% increase in draw speed using Katana's

[Kenjutsu Weapon Mastery (PASSIVE) LV1 EXP:0.00%  
The knowledge any basic user of Kenjutsu would know.  
50% increase in attack damage with Katana's  
10% increase in attack speed with Katana's  
75% increase in the awareness of your surroundings and how to utilize them in a fight

I felt the knowledge flow through me freely and also felt my awareness open slightly. Checking the passives granted first I could see that it would help me out tremendously as they both specifically buffed my damage with the weapon I was using currently. Despite their stacking buff they did focus on slightly different things. Moving on I could see that I also obtained a few draw skills from iaido but I was not particularly interested in those currently. Kenjutsu had a variety of specific skills that basically improved my own self-taught skills.

[Kenjutsu Footwork Mastery (PASSIVE) LV1 EXP:0.00%]  
The footwork utilized by Kenjutsu to always be prepared to shift to your next strike.  
50% increase in movement speed when attacking using a Katana technique  
50% increase in recovering from bad footing

The knowledge I was gaining was pretty much how to execute feints and a variety of other techniques you would expect to be important versus a real human and not a Grimm. Although this one Kenjutsu technique caught my eye

[Shinobi Kai Kenjutsu (ACTIVE) LV1 EXP:0.00%]  
The combination of nine strikes to take down your opponent. This is a complex move set that utilizes close range and a variety of movements to take down your opponent quickly. The skill can be interrupted at any time and even switched to another opponent if required.  
100% increase in damage for every successive strike of this move performed.  
100% increase in movement speed while performing this skill  
50% increase in attack speed for every successive strike of this move performed  
-200% decrease in attack speed in the event of a successful parry-Many feints are advised when using this skill.

I thought that this here is probably my best skill currently and it was only level 1. I need to grind this sucker as hard as I can. Searching through the possible move combinations I could see that I could travel up to 10m on one combo which still allowed me to flow from target to target using this skill. This move clearly was what the other books had been preparing me for. After that I was left with the move skills and the healing skill.

[Flash Step (ACTIVE) LV1 EXP:0.00%]  
A dash using aura to power the movement. This enables for great distances to be covered. Usage in combat is ill advised unless you have the most impeccable perception as your speed is incredibly fast.

[Swiftness (ACTIVE) LV1 EXP:0.00%]  
The usage of aura to strengthen the muscles that enable for faster movement in all situations. The muscles strengthened adjust to fit the movement enabling for the best results.

Once the knowledge sank in I realized exactly why I was not able to gain a skill from my earlier attempts. Where I simply forced aura to strengthen the whole leg these targeted the muscles and increased what actually mattered. In my case I raised the power of my legs by 100% but only my speed at dashing by 20%. This increased the legs power by 0% but the dashing muscles by 100%. Feeling a great deal of understanding I imagined I could replicate this process in other ways now as well.

[Aura Soul Recovery (Active) Lv1 EXP:0.00%]  
The usage of your aura to assist someone else's aura in restoring the body.  
With dust, HP 50 recovery. MP 50 recovery. Status effect removed illness removed.  
Without dust, HP 50 recovery. Status effect removed. Illness removed.

Well this was not as great as I was hoping for. Still I would grind it a bit and see if it leveled up to some real HP restoration. The prospect of restoring MP was enticing but with my HP to MP conversion it was not really needed. Finally one more thing before I summoned a horde of robots to slaughter before class. Looking through my inventory I withdrew the items that Zagul had dropped. There was of course money which I immediately pocketed on discovering at Zagul's corpse. But it had also dropped a vest of some sort. I used observe and it said that it was leather formed from the hide of a Grimm and since Grimm dissolve on death the process had been incredibly challenging and highly rewarding as it was stronger than thick solid steel but lighter than a regular vest. It also gave a 10% movement speed buff and 20% damage reduction buff. I immediately put it on underneath my uniform and felt air currents parting around me to give myself easier movement. The Grimm hide felt weird but also very comfortable. This led me to wonder, who on remnant had ever harvested Grimm hides for profit? Well with my business resolved I stood and walked over to the flat screen panel on the wall to summon my droids when a student walked in. He immediately scoffed loudly at my direction and said "OH look it's David. Trying to improve the futility that is you? Well the big boy needs to use the room so scram."

To my credit I did not immediately sock him in the face as hard as I could but I seriously felt a vein bulge. I then looked his direction as if I deigned to notice his presence and looked back at what I was doing. "HEY!" He said fury clearly flowing from his voice. "I wupped your butt now scram or I will do it again!"

"Oh?" I responded "Is that a challenge? Since I was here first I have dibs that is the school policy during free time and really such a large room is sufficient for us both. But since your inferior mind cannot accept this I guess we can resort to violence."

His face immediately contorted into the most horrible expression I have ever seen on a human being in my entire life and it felt really good to get some payback at this jerk. He was the strongest in class currently undefeated and I was fairly confident I could now take him.

The Monk  
Qua Fu  
Lv 53

"The middle of the room. Now." He said crisply

I started moving towards it and remembered to turn on EXP sharing for those two lazy sleepy heads in the room. Even if I would level slower I still wanted to bring them with me.

Arriving at the center of the room we both took a stance about 20m away from each other. A quick observe showed me his semblance was a speed type like before that enabled him to move through molecules with zero resistance. Apparently this enabled him to also walk through walls and people without aura. He also was able to basically rip people's hearts out with this semblance. I really did not want to know why my observe skill was telling me that. I could also see his DEX was only 140 which was higher than my base but lower than the passive buffs made it. Nothing else of note stood out and so I took my stance and activated field. I drew my sword and took the Kenjutsu stances I learned before. I also activated my aura and turned on swiftness. Having fought him before I knew that he fought with gauntlet type weapons that could also shoot projectiles. That with his ability to defy physics and ignore resistances he preferred close combat over ranged since. I presume because if he penetrated right he could rip out someone's heart. Ok so I still could not stop thinking about it because that gave me the willies. Thankfully my aura would protect me if I focused hard enough but I really did not know how my semblance would handle my heart being removed from my body.

Then we began. He dashed forward like a magnet was pulling him towards me. His movements extremely fluid and seemingly without any of the normal restrictions I see runners face from wind pressure. I immediately tensed and prepared to dodge or parry depending on how he attempted to strike. I sensed the moment he entered my field and knew he was going for a feint on the right while kicking towards my left. It made sense because my sword had a further reach. Instead I simply stepped backwards far enough to place him out of range and into my perfect range. He apparently did not expect me to be able to dodge that kick and the inertia carried him in a spin around. Then I activated Shinobi Kai Kenjutsu and struck hard at his back slamming him forwards as he collapsed towards the ground. Since the first strike is quite lenient he did not sustain any real MP damage and I made sure to press the attack quickly while watching to make sure I did not inadvertently kill him as I had no clue how strong I had grown. I then performed a thrusting maneuver as my second strike dashing forward to close the distance my blow had generated. The strike tossed him further off balance as I watched his MP decrease twice as much as before. Considering each strike should be 100% stronger then each previous strike I was quite happy. Performing a quick forward movement to get into range again and then a vertical slash that went diagonally downward. Followed by another slash at his legs to completely toss him to the ground and a quick stab downwards crashing into his aura. At this point I stopped the skill because his MP was practically empty and any further would do severe harm. That last blow had also been a critical hit and if I had not pulled it a bit I imagine it would have plunged right into him.

I took a deep breath and checked my MP. While each blow increased the damage it also increased the MP requirement by a percentage. Those seven blows had eaten nearly half my MP but considering the fact that the whole sequence only required two seconds it was fairly mind bogglingly high damage per second. Even chaining the formal skills I had or even swinging my fastest swings I was unable to match this speed and power.

Qua simply laid there flat on his back staring at me. Then a sneer developed on his face and he shouted "This is not the end of this!" and he stormed out of the training room.

You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!

I had honestly expected more but I figured if we all leveled twice then that's 6 which is probably what I would expect from him. After that I fought a couple spider droids and leveled twice more before it was time for class.

* * *

Review,favorite or follow if you liked this! Give me feedback on anything you think needs improvement!


	5. Chapter 5 The Arena

**Honestly the hardest part about writing this story is coming up with rwby like names. Well I think I described the training room well enough. I left the library to the imagination cause... It's a library. If you haven't seen one in your life you should change that. If you have seen a bookstore though it's the same thing and you're safe.**

* * *

Chapter 5

* * *

I grudgingly went to class. This is the feeling a Gamer gets when he sees significant progress with his Game character but then has to go to school and listen to a teacher lecture on something he hopes is important. Except I was having these emotions about myself which felt kind of strange. When I entered the classroom, I was the last person of my team to arrive and therefore moved to sit near my team.

"David" Jon greeted me quietly.

"Hello" I replied

"You've been busy" Aaron stated "I practically did a face plant into the floor when a blue box dinged in front of me while my eyes were closed and indicated I had leveled up. The worst part is I could see the blue box while my eyes were closed."

"Um. I'm sorry I gave you guy's four levels and interrupted your beauty sleep?" I replied sarcastically

"You better be" Jon huffed "we woke up screaming and then Serena woke up…" Jon shivered

"We promised we wouldn't mention that.." Aaron grumbled

Sensing things I should not go into as both were looking as if they were in pain I changed the subject. "Well on the bright side the reason you leveled up is I kicked Qua Fu's butt followed by a couple spider droids."

Aaron and Jon stared at me for a moment and even Serena looked. She had apparently been feigning disinterest and actually listening.

"I did not tell you guys but I had over 12 levels of points saved before the ursa knocked out Serena. I then spent those in order to power up for that fight and frankly with over 74 levels of stat grinding before I even spent a single point it was natural that this would happen eventually. I think it was stranger that I was still weaker after four years of constant training."

"David" Serena stated calmly "Most people have been training for the last eight years perhaps not constantly but a significant amount to get where they are now. I am not quite sure it compares with your tremendous level of growth."

"Maybe so" I replied "But I also don't get any super powers that allow me to teleport across a room. What do they often say about our semblances? It is limited by our imagination?"

"Fair point." Serena responded. "But I think you take the cake for fastest possible growth physically."

"That I definitely agree with." I replied.

Then class began and we pulled out our books. It is the study of the history of Atlas. Honestly I would have thought it was more interesting if it had not been actively ramming the Faunus race the whole time. And so class ended after a while.

The next class had been canceled for some reason and so we filed off to the training room. We summoned up about 100 of the human shaped robots called Atlesian Knight-130 and then 3 Spider Droids. Serena and I left the knight's to the brothers while we worked on the spider droids. I talked some strategy with Serena and ways we could combo if necessary. Them we practiced. I used Giant's Strike combined with sword dash and some other skills and experimented with the symmetry. Giant's strike allowed me to dramatically increase the damage of any strike and made it an excellent move except for its expensive MP cost. If I combined the Giant's strike with Shinobi Kai Kenjutsu I imagine I could deal some huge damage except with Giant's strike requiring 1000 MP a cast currently and Shinobi Kai Kenjutsu requiring 1000 per strike it would eat everything I had very quickly. To be honest part of myself wanted to spend a lot on INT since it gave MP regen and MP but all my skills scaled off STR and DEX and since STR raises MP as well now I might as well put it there. I decided I would raise DEX and STR to over 150 and see if I received some bonus skills. After we cleaned up the Spider Droids I watched the brothers fight the knight's.

I watch Aaron and Jon and notice that they aren't pushing with their aura despite it looking like it keeps trying to do that at times. After they finished the droids I asked them about it.

"Yep it happens at times while I'm fighting." Aaron replied "I'm not really sure what is happening and then suddenly the enemy is knocked backwards."

"Is that not your semblance?" I replied "It really sounds like you are striking with your aura as a separate attack."

"Hmm" He considered "Let me try something then."

The brothers experimented for a while and suddenly Aaron grew what seemed to be aura weapons from his body and was striking with them. For Jonathan his aura would separate from his body and still be accessible for manipulation and he could send it around the room striking objects. Even after striking it did not dissipate or lose strength but it would lose form after a powerful aura attack was used on it.

Then suddenly I winced as a crunching sound resounded from above their heads. Apparently this was just heard by myself as their titles changed and level changed.

The Stoic Controller  
LV42 Jonathan Fisk

The Rascal  
Lv43 Aaron Fisk

Since Aaron's title did not change I wondered what that meant. Maybe this did not affect him significantly enough. Considering the rapid level gain I was pretty pumped though.

"Um.. How do you two feel?"

Aaron and Jon looked at me funny "Fine.. Why?"

"Well you both leveled around twenty times." They both opened said "Status Screen" and their stats popped up. I could see their eyes widen and when I went over to look I could see they had each around 90-100 points unspent.

"Darn that's unfair. I want a semblance that gives me a free twenty levels."

"You already have a semblance that gives you free levels." Aaron countered "In fact I don't think YOU get to complain."

I huffed. "Alright then I need to grind some skills for the remaining time before class. I suggest you two get intimately acquainted with your semblances now. Also those points feel free to spend them on whatever you want to strengthen. Maybe a decent amount of INT and WIS for Jon since he has mobile aura. Heck Aaron you also basically form weapons from aura maybe INT and WIS would work for you as well… Either way no rush currently think about it and practice with your weapons until you understand how they work and what you are lacking."

As for myself I started grinding my skills. When I ran out of MP I converted HP to MP and healed myself leveling my healing. At first it was an endless cycle with no MP increase but as the skill leveled I was able to cast it for around 45MP and heal for 55. Slowly it started helping me restore faster. After around 30 minutes I would be at max MP again. Then I remembered to raise strength and dexterity to 150 and just for the heck I raised VIT to 101. As I felt the changes take effect popups with new skills appeared along with this sense of growth.

Name: David Gale  
Class: The Gamer  
Level: 29  
HP: 8900+10235  
MP: 6600+17700  
STR: 151+27  
VIT: 101+22  
DEX: 151+68  
INT: 62  
WIS: 65  
LUK: 0

Point: 2  
MONEY: 25000 Lien

[Aura Strike (Active) Lv1 EXP:0.00% MP:300]  
Your muscles have developed to great heights. By reaching this pinnacle your aura simple shoots off whenever you use your muscles. This enables for long distance aura strikes depending on strength and skill level. Max distance is 10m*STR*.01.  
200% increase in damage dealt decreasing by 50% every meter over the max distance.

[Limit Break (Active) Lv1 EXP:0.00% MP:5000 every 10 seconds  
With the development of additional neural passageways in the brain your processing power has increased dramatically. With this you have a more direct access to the nerves in your body allowing for even greater reaction speed. Additionally your ability to process events has increased again.  
500% increase in movement speed  
500% increase in attack speed  
500% increase in perception

[The Sturdy Body (Passive) Lv1 EXP:0.00%]  
Through the strengthening of the body over time it has become as sturdy as iron and as flexible as leather. The rate of recovery has increased dramatically and completely shrugs off any small strikes.  
300% increased HP regeneration  
30% damage reduction  
Immunity to minor damage.

[Thick Blood (Passive) Lv1 EXP:0.00%]  
The very blood running through your body has metamorphosed. It will now immediately clot any wounds and passively restore your HP by 50% of the total damage received over 30 seconds. Additionally any blood that exits your body is aura infused and will burn anyone who is deemed an enemy.  
100% increased HP regeneration

I felt quite pleased with the new skills I obtained. I should be able to grind much faster now with the increased HP regeneration and pulling from my HP in a fight for MP will not be dangerous as it regens significantly faster than my MP. The first thing I needed to check is if far strike worked with my sword. Drawing my Katana I targeted a dummy standing in the corner and activated the skill slicing with my sword. The aura that generated from my muscles traveled down my arm onto the sword and was released as a sharp blade and dove into the dummy causing it to topple over. After waiting a moment the machines raised the dummy up again and I repeated the process adding Giant's Strike to the combo. The blade flew out like lightning and sliced the dummy clean in half this time. I was very pleased. No one would expect an attack like that from me currently. In fact I could probably pass that off as my semblance.

Next I activated Limit Break and felt the MP drain away. I quickly tested the movement bonus and attack speed discovering I was the same, I thought, but when I looked at Serena, Aaron and Jon I noticed they appeared to be moving in slow motion. In fact by the time I moved over to Jon and then around him his eyes were barely following me.

When I deactivated the skill Aaron said "What the heck was that! You were moving insanely fast!"

"I raised my Dexterity over 150 and it gave me a Limit Break skill. I can now move very fast and attack very fast at the cost of one fourth of my total MP."

Aaron whistled "That's some speed though. I do not think there is any student in the whole school currently who can keep up with you."

"While that may be true I can only feasibly maintain that for about twenty to thirty seconds and if I used Shinobi Kai Kenjutsu it would only last me ten seconds before it burned out. Still I think that would disable anyone who did not have the ability to nullify damage for a time."

"Still I want to try something. Shoot me with one of your bullets."

Aaron lined up and waited for my signal and then shot. I activated Limit Break and brought my sword down on the bullet slicing it in half. The bullet cleanly flew past me landing somewhere.

Aaron whistled "Now that's a neat trick. Can you handle more than one?" he inquired

"One is definitely the limit for now. That required intense concentration and even then I had to predict the path as opposed to seeing the bullet."

"Hmm… Well if you ever become able to block gunfire from a fully automatic let me know. I know a place where we could have some fun…" His eye glinted evilly and I decided I would not inquire about this location ever. After this we continued training our skills. Eventually the brothers tested stat assignments and determined what made their life easier and ended up going with an INT and STR balance with enough DEX to not be too slow. Serena did whatever Serena does. I really had no clue. She seemed to be meditating and then one moment would appear across the room still sitting cross legged. If I had say it was just bizarre. But then again my ability is pretty bizarre so who am I to judge? Then the bell rang and we were off to our next class and then to lunch. Afterwards more classes and history. Finally we were back in the training room perfecting our new skills. We briefly stopped for dinner and then returned to practice. For myself I had many more hours of training to do. Between the new regeneration and the healing I was able to maintain a fairly steady pace and reduced the cost of Shinobi Kai Kenjutsu to only eat one fourth my whole MP instead of half. Plus I could restore my total MP in about 3 minutes now. If I factored in healing I could top off in under a minute thirty.

Finally when lights out came we went to bed. The next day we had class and it was a practice session with sparing. When the teacher, Whose name is Frank Pollini and a lvl ? by the way, suggested we have a team spar immediately Qua Fu stood up and challenged my team. Frank looked troubled and expected a slaughter so he seemed to be about to intervene.

"Alright" I spoke loudly and confidently. "We will take you on and win."

Qua merely grimaced at me and his team began moving to the center of the room. The room was a circular shape with spectator stands outside the arena for everyone else to sit and watch. The whole room was sufficiently large to allow for two teams of four to fight easily.

"Fine! Go fight to your hearts content." Frank huffed at he walked away. I knew then that not all the teachers wanted us dead or gone and he was surprisingly a good one.

Our teams were positioned on the opposite sides of the room and given a moment to prepare. Qua's teammates were two men and two girls. Besides Qua's ability that I warned everyone about in advance thoroughly while stressing the heart ripping part despite the disbelieving stares I was given, I also mentioned the Girl Sue who has some sort of ice ability that lets her shoot it. It was not entirely clear the level of control but it seemed scary. The other girl Ling had some sort of Gravity field. Perhaps it could be moved away from her? It seemed to be in development as well. Finally the last boy wielded a pretty hefty hammer and his semblance allowed for the manipulation of metal objects he comes in physical contact with. Apparently he could make them lighter or heavier at will and do some pretty wild things with them. Finally with my team briefed we divvied up the roles. We all agreed getting trapped in ice would be bad and therefore Jon was on ice pick duty. Aaron would deal with the metal bender and I would rematch with the speedster. Meanwhile Serena would pop over and incapacitate the gravity girl then switch to whoever she thought was best next.

Finally we took our stances and waited for the signal to start. When the signal was given Serena vanished. Simultaneously a ridiculously heavy feeling covered the arena. I then knew the gravity girl was simply amping up the gravity presumably on just us but it seemed she did not have perfect control as her teammates seemed to feel it a bit. The weight didn't feel steady but it was something still. Then I saw Serena pop up behind the girl followed by her gasp as she slammed into the ground. Apparently they anticipated this and the gravity around the girl was on full. Serena popped away and appeared next to me panting heavily. I could see her MP had dropped by half already.

"Well that could have started better." I said nonchalantly.

Watching how they moved against Aaron and Jon it was clear Qua and the gravity girl were targeting myself and Serena.

"Alright change of plans. Let the girl support him and back me up versus Qua as you recover. I'll try to take a pot shot at her at some point and see if it downs her."

She nodded as her breathing began to calm down. I immediately drew my sword and shot forward activating swiftness but also using Flash Step to pop to the other side of the room slightly behind Qua. Activating Giant's Strike I swung hard at Qua's back hoping to catch him by surprise. He noticed and moved immediately away looking quite surprised I was there and then moving in to position to attack. Additionally my body felt ridiculously heavy as I saw that darn girl again bearing down on me. Glancing at her MP bar it was draining her hugely and I estimated that she would be out in the next minute. Despite the extra weight I managed to bring my sword up to block Qua's strike. Qua's face showed surprise. I imagine almost anyone else under this gravity would buckle but instead it made my body sluggish as crud. However before I could move away Qua's gauntlet shot me in chest knocking me backwards as he used the momentum to strike at me again. At that moment Serena popped behind him and sliced at Qua's back pretty hard. Qua was immediately flung forward off balance and unable to strike. I was too off balance to do much so I simply placed my sword in his path as we went down in a tumble. The moment Qua became too close to me that he clearly would be caught in the gravity field the entire weight was lifted. In that instant I separated from him with a kick and fired an aura strike reinforced with Giant's Strike off at the girl. She took it square in the chest and went flying to the back wall. I saw her MP drop low but she was still in the fight however I doubted she could summon another gravity field.

Instead at that moment Qua landed a couple excellent hits at my exposed side before Serena could pressure him away. His annoying fists felt like rockets on my back and I saw my MP drain a bunch. I refilled it with my HP and watched the HP begin restoring. At this moment the ice girl defeated Jon and things got a bit dicey. Apparently she had something like 20 spikes floating above her head and was continuously creating them and sending them at her opponent. Glancing at the ice girls MP bar she had my respect as it was still halfway full despite defeating Jon. Hopefully this experience taught him the nature of more is sometimes better. I signaled Serena to finish off the other girl and flash stepped behind the ice girl. Qua tried to react but frankly flash step was really fast. She seemed to be creating ice off herself then it would rip apart in sizable painful looking chunks and float into the air and stab people. That just left me with so many warm fuzzies. I knew I needed to drop her now and thankfully her ability had seemingly rooted her to the ground.

I immediately activated Shinobi Kai Kenjutsu powered up with Giant's strike and let this girl have it. Sure I felt bad for her being a girl and I was wacking on her as hard as I could but let us be honest she looked more like an ice demon right now then a girl so it really didn't hit me until later. I slashed hard at her back ripping ice off in waves and I watched her MP crashing. My second strike came in a flash as it struck up the same line and then I saw the ice holding her immediately give way as she flew forward. I dashed to continue the assault as a shield of ice formed in front of me. Using my third hit to remove the wall without Giant's strike I plunged through and stabbed at her empowering it once more with Giant's strike. I heard the bell as she was into the danger zone and then looked for Qua. I found him on my left nearly within kicking distance. I swung hard at him with my 4th strike boosted again. The speed and damage continuing to rise as the hit knocked him back. I followed up with my 5th strike and began syphoning all my HP I could to sustain this attack. A quick 6th and 7th strike knocked him out of the battle and nearly myself as I forced my MP to stay above the danger line while running quite low on my HP. I immediately glanced at Serena. She seemed to be winning but that gravity girl had other tricks and was fending her off. Aaron looked like he was struggling. I watched him try to block the hammer and then get flattened as if he was a pancake. Somehow despite this he was still ok and hanging on. I paused and started healing myself as quickly as I could getting my HP back to half and my MP also to half. Then I judged which fight needed my assistance more and determined I had to go for the hammer kid. At one opportune moment when he was mid swing I flash stepped behind him and boosted an attack at his back. I sent him sailing until he was caught on his hammer that suddenly anchored him to the ground as if it weighed a ton. As he regained his feet the hammer popped up like a feather and he took a stance wary of both of us now.

"Well this is not going as well as I had hoped" I quipped over to Aaron.

He grunted breathing heavy and summoned more aura blades to strike with. "Careful the strike looks weak then suddenly it is like being hit by a truck."

"Hmm" I mused this sounded like a perfect test for something I had just enough MP for. I took my stance and focused aura into the muscles that strengthened my attacks. Then I applied Giant's Strike to my next strike and performed the sword dash skill. The slash came down at his hammer but then I veered the attack slightly forcing him to adjust at the last second placing his hammer below my sword. It was like Aaron said I felt like I was trying to cut through an entire truck at once. However I felt the truck losing and my swing sliced cleanly through the handle and snacked him away. His MP was not gone but with his hammer broken he forfeited. A skill has been created through action. Pushing aside the notification I looked at Serena who was fuming at this girl's annoying tenacity. The girl noticing the slim odds as being last one standing surrendered and the fight was over. Our team had just beaten the strongest team in the class. The other teams looked shocked and just stood there. Then the teacher started clapping and the room erupted in applause.

* * *

Review,favorite or follow if you liked this! Give me feedback on anything you think needs improvement!


	6. Chapter 6 The Group Stages

**I'm hoping for some feedback regarding the skills. Should I generalize them as a story teller would ie I gained a skill for cutting that does this and this or keep displaying them like The Gamer manga did? I feel that writing it out lends itself to a generalized fashion as opposed to how a game would present it. I also think it just flows way better. When I do hit a skill that matters massively to the storyline I'll post it but otherwise general strengthening skills I'll probably not post about as much and just blow through it so the story progresses properly otherwise I will end up writing six chapters of pure skill creation and grinding and fusing… Although the fusing I'll talk about later.**

* * *

Chapter 6

* * *

After that day everything changed but not for the better. When it became known that a Faunus lover and her teammates rose to the top of the 1st years there was nothing but hate from the 2nd, 3rd and 4th years. When we went on Grimm hunting trips the areas the teachers dropped us were vicious and challenging. The teachers who supported us clearly were fewer and had less power than those who hated us. But this worked out perfectly for us because of the increased XP gains. Meanwhile at the school the training rooms had now been occupied by upper classmen 24/7 to prevent us from using them. While we could fight for the rights to train, once we won within twenty minutes another group would come to stop us. While it was great training in its own right it wore us down quickly and did not give us the specific focused attention we needed on developing our skills and so we fled the training rooms and went out to the snow covered fields. We maximized our aura constantly to combat the cold and in the harshness of winter practiced daily until I had tripled my maximum fighting time from before and the brother's had gained full control of their semblances. Serena had learned much from her failure to even take out a single opponent in our fight and was now actively rectifying that. She was utilizing smoke bombs now as well as using a ranged weapon more often. She knew sticking to melee made her teleportation locations obvious. We had sparred briefly so I could highlight the weaknesses using my field skill. As long as I knew she would appear somewhere around myself I could simply react the moment the air stirred and strike at her. In that sense her ability telegraphed her intended teleportation location for anyone with a certain level of sensory perception.

The brothers sought to learn what the limits of their abilities were. They both strove daily to surpass the ice spears that the ice girl had been capable of utilizing by increasing the number of aura weapons they could summon. I reminded them that they did not have to stick to purely offensive weapons and could also be the most versatile and well defended fighter by summoning shields as well. With this revelation I saw them toss in shields as well at times when sparing. The brothers continued practicing with their aura until it became second nature to them. They needed to in an instant be able to strike from dozens of directions in unique patterns that were not predictable. This is immensely challenging to do but slowly but surely as the weeks and months rolled by they increased the numbers of patterns and attacks.

As for myself I trained harder than ever. I managed to develop several skills to boost my attack power in fights to further heights like I did against the hammer kid in that one fight but they cost a lot of MP at level 1. Considering it was a 1000% damage increase it made sense and so I grinded skills like never before. I managed to gain a parry passive by sparing with Serena who also uses a sword for her close range melee. She uses something like a scimitar that can transform to a spear if needed or a ranged gun at times. The parry skill generally increased my ability to block all weapons and even passively increased my ability to parry projectiles. I also spent a great deal of time grinding Limit Break. Since it allowed me to move and execute skills faster it allowed me to grind faster. Since the cost reduced as I leveled it I was able to use it for longer and longer stretches. The heal skill I had started leveling has become very high in the upper 90's now. I had to spam it constantly to support Limit Break and try to keep training the other skills. The heal skill now restores 4500 HP in one shot but it also costs more MP then before. When it crossed level 50 it evolved into an advanced heal and the cost rose and started dropping after leveling it again.

Finally the day arrived for signup to the individual tournaments. Atlas believed that only the strongest students should be sent to the Vytal Festival and even if teams must be split up for this event the important thing is to win. So of course all of us signed up with the goal to win. I left EXP share on though since to the end I still wanted us four to be deemed the victors. I knew it was unlikely that we would all win in the individual tournament considering we were all first years and most of the entries were 3rd and 4th years. Even still I liked what I saw. The average fourth year was around level 85 with the strongest student I had seen being level 134. I was level 75 now and had risen my INT and WIS to over 100 in order to gain increased control over my aura. This strengthened all my enhancing skills that used aura and doubled aura strikes power. I also raised my STR and DEX to over 200. The passives I gained from doing this were massive bonuses to all my physical characteristics. At this point I think I could take most of the 4th years and hoped that by the time I reached the finals I would have everything I needed. I did have 50 stats points in reserve in case I need a boost to something in order to win but altogether I felt pretty confident. Aaron and Jon were both 71 and 72 and Serena had reached 79. Surprisingly Aaron and Jon raised their levels through normal training around half as fast as I did which I felt was still pretty amazingly fast. Then with my semblance helping out they really kept leveling quite quickly.

Sadly extra training and semblances that boost training does not help to rectify that these students have had three years of training in advanced combat courses from teachers who actually helped them as opposed to our team being sidelined and discriminated against pretty harshly. The first year is supposed to be team building training anyways with the next three years focusing on individual development and then bringing that back into the team. So when I saw the tournament board I was not at all surprised to discover we were all paired against people with levels of 90 or greater. At this point there was no way Aaron and Jon would ever advance unless they had a splendid matchup and won due to power imbalance. Still I figured they had a shot. The both of them grew fastest in actual combat and with the tournament having a losers bracket they had the greatest shot of that here.

So finally the first day arrived. With over several hundred total students at Atlas academy and only some two hundred participating it was still a huge amount that required reduction in order to get to the exciting bracket style everyone knows and loves. So the first couple days are a series of matches in a row around eight or so opponents. The opponents will fight until the two with the highest score advances to the bracket from each group.

My first opponent was named Lee Yang. He was something like a nunchuck user and had two of them. His semblance… Um. Despite the observe skill rendering it to me in text I could not understand it even if I tried. It said something like the art of motion peaks and then explodes and leaves the world awash with sadness. I've read some pretty funky things but I did not know what to say to this. Either way his level was 94 and he had some insane strength and intelligence. Clearly his aura control would be formidable and I would have to keep ready. I also needed to be wary of him binding my sword with one of his nunchucks and then disarming me. To deal with that I locked my grip to the sword using aura. A skill has been created through action… I glanced at it saw the EXP going up and motioned it away. It'd help but I still did not want to get caught by surprise. I figured I would go all out use limit break from the start and see if I could win before he did whatever his semblance thought it did. Each student would be sent to his designated arena to fight his opponent with a teacher watching over to make sure nothing happened and because of this I had to wait for my turn.

When it was finally my turn I moved into the arena. The ground was a cold stone floor and covered a good deal of area. The seats were placed up high to prevent accidental causalities. While Lee took his place on the opposite side of the ring, I kept my sword in the scabbard and waited for the signal. The bell was rang and in an instant the world froze around myself as I entered Limit break and activated all my speed skills. As I had leveled limit break the speed of perception and my speed in general had increased massively. I utilized flash step to reach Lee in an instant standing behind him. However surprisingly he moved a bit slow to my perception but fast enough that I knew he would be able to block my strikes. Then I let rip a new skill I had created. By fusing the knowledge of iaido and Kenjutsu I had developed a technique that boosted the attacks of all skills afterwards for two seconds after performing a fast draw iaido skill. This meant if I had time I could perform a speed draw attack for two seconds and then sheath and repeat constantly increasing my damage by 500% while it was active. The catch is it actually had to hit him when I drew.

In a motion like lightning I drew my sword arcing upwards slicing towards Lee. He managed to turn around and block with his nunchucks as sparks flew between us. No one on my team was fast enough to block me anymore much less know where I was standing. While this told me the school was vast and wide it also spoke ill of their chances at victory. With the strike successful I felt power surge through my body and activated Shinobi Kai Kenjutsu. The improvements on this skill has been huge as the first slash now dealt 225% damage and it increased by that amount enough time. Of course I reinforced with Giant's strike and the skill I gained from strengthening my muscles called Giant's Strength. In a flash my sword reverse direction midair and slammed down on Lee. I could see his MP take a huge hit despite blocking. In the next instant however before I could swing again he appeared on my left. Rather he beautifully slithered left and took a strike at me. I however did not want to cancel my skill so I simply utilized a parry technique in the skill and batted away his oncoming nunchuck. Strangely however every time we exchanged blows he would slither away and strike at me. For myself who operated at a level of perception far above my peers it was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen. Then suddenly I felt this overwhelming sadness tackle me hard as tears rolled down my cheeks. I was dumbfounded for a moment but blocked Lee's next strike on instinct before I felt the Gamer's mind kick in and all the sadness was suddenly gone. Then I understood his semblance. He literally moved artfully charging whatever the heck that was and then exploded an emotional wave at his opponents probably crippling them emotionally and mentally in the process. Sadly for him it does not apply to myself because of my semblance. Moments after I used my 6th strike to block his nunchuck he was slithering again and probably feeling pretty confident. However after six strikes my attack speed is hugely increased and so I simply sliced him as he was slithering to his next location. I saw a look of horror spread across his face as my blow knocked him backwards through the air. Naturally I had applied all my strength buffs and the damage was devastating as he flew backwards into the other side of the arena. I saw his MP was still above the limit and I flash stepped over to him placing my 8th strike into his chest. The wall cracked from the force and Lee fell unconscious from his aura shattering but I made sure not to physically harm him at least.

You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!

I imagine this was an excellent present to send my teammates before their matches.

* * *

Review,favorite or follow if you liked this! Give me feedback on anything you think needs improvement!


	7. Chapter 7 The Heir of Ironwood

**Hey again everyone! I was taking a break trying to determine the course of the tournament and hoping to get some feedback before I continued. Since I kept getting favorites and no reviews I figured I was doing good.**

* * *

Chapter 7

The Heir of Ironwood

* * *

After the fight had been called I left the arena and walked towards where Serena's fight is supposed to take place. Serena was already in the waiting area so I did not see her. The spectator area was curved around the arena similar to many sports arenas. Of course there were stalls all over the place selling goods, food and the lines which never seemed to decrease. I guess the Atlas student tournament was extremely popular to come watch. I wonder if the people who saw my fight were disappointed by the speed of the battle it only lasted around fifteen seconds after all. Looking through the glass I could see two students fighting. Glancing at my pamphlet my next match would not start until round one finished. If each fight was between ten to thirty minutes, I have a long break… I watched the two students fight each other fiercely. One of them wielded something like a morning star but it had holes at interesting locations. Just when a standard attack would come at you, suddenly his attack would gain massive speed as he fired off a dust round or another time it would stop and blast you backwards with a dust round. It was quite a good weapon all things considered.

The only reason I did not favor using dust rounds as much as others did is because I had developed my aura strike skill and a couple others for long range and frankly, my abilities hit way harder. Still I lacked one major element others could capitalize upon immensely, I lacked a proper semblance. While I could gain skills at extremely abnormal rates it was technically the same skill anyone could learn. One day I knew I was going to run into a hunter who knew just as much as I did but also had a semblance. Although I hoped my stats would far surpass theirs and make up for the difference. Or perhaps I simply needed some gear. Gamers are usually pretty weak without their legendary items and the only item I still had was the vest I was wearing. Granted the vest gives me amazing bonuses with that 20% damage reduction but it still did not boost my attack damage or anything else and eventually as I kill more powerful Grimm it should give me better ideas.

After a short while the battle finished up. The morning star user managed to chip away at his opponent's aura until his victory was called. Then there were several brief couple minutes as someone ran onto the field and he started returning the arena to its original state before the battle began. Using observe I could see that he had an earth controlling semblance allowing him to shift great quantities of earth. Somehow he wound up as the arena reset guy. Personally I would hate that. Then it was Serena's match. The competitors walked out from opposite sides and prepared for battle. I saw aura swirling around Serena as she must be preparing to jump the moment the battle begins. Using observe on her opponent, James, I could see that he utilizes a moment impairing semblance. It seems like he ejects clumps of aura that sticks to users. The question remains if it would prevent Serena from teleporting or if it will be ineffective here.

The bell rings out and Serena vanishes from sight reappearing a distance away on his right. She shoots off a dust round and then teleports to her opponents left shooting another dust round that uses ice dust. On contact, James becomes covered in a frosty nip and I could see he was struggling to break some ice at his feet. Serena however, did not give him the chance. Appearing behind him she performed a hit combo shaving away at his aura. The force of her strikes rips her opponent free from the ice and sends him flying. Serena moves to pursue but then falls on her face. Looking at her I could see that sticky aura was spread on the ground and had completely gripped her body to the dirt ground. It was all over her sword as well. In fact every slash at James made the aura fling off in globs and stick all over the place.

While she attempted to free herself James had recovered standing to his feet and turned his weapon towards her. He utilizes a high powered halberd that could fold into an axe if he needed. At the joint it had a high powered rifle equipped he used for long range presumably. James shot off several shots nailing Serena in the back. At this point Serena teleported across the arena to the other wall. When my eyes caught up I could see she was still covered in the gooey aura and it was restricting her movements. That is probably a just barely better then worst case scenario there… James eyes flickered around the arena searching for her. Upon discovering her location he brought his rifle to bear and let it rip firing off shot after shot. I would probably do the same thing. The chances of reaching a teleporter before she teleported is quite slim. Serena disappeared after the first shot and continued struggling against the goo elsewhere. I saw her aura spike and suddenly all the goo attached to her flung off like it was repulsed by a magnet. Her aura also dropped a decent amount and I wonder if that was worth it. Then the fight settled into a long range warfare. Serena knew better then to close in and attack and James could not get close even if he wanted to. However as the fight progressed more of James aura started coating the floor of the arena as he systematically moved whenever an area was sufficiently covered.

Finally Serena teleported to the last zone left to be coated and James dashed towards her. They both had about half their total aura left and one really good swing or a few decent hits from either could toss them into the red. Serena teleported right before James swipe connected and appeared behind James. I saw her sword glow quite bright as she forced tons of aura into her weapon and swung at James. James rolled forward probably assuming it was the safest direction and Serena narrowly missed. Serena did not look too perturbed though as she dashed forward lunging at James while he recovered from his roll. James brought his weapon up to block at the last moment but clearly the blow hurt as he flew backwards into the wall.

In training, Serena had not decided to raise her strength instead she continued raising her INT and WIS and then utilized her abundant aura to strengthen her attacks. Of course such a strong hit had covered Serena in James aura again. I could see her scowling as she tried to raise her weapon up to continue firing at James. Utilizing her aura she forced her weapon to raise and started hammering away at James. Her first shot was an ice round and latched him harder against the wall hitting his legs and both arms with subsequent shots. Her next shots were all fire rounds as she started hammering his chest over and over. Then a strange thing happened as I saw James recover from his disorientating introduction to the wall, his aura sitting at his feet oozed up in a wall in front of him shielding him from Serena's ranged attacks. While James continued to remove his ligaments from the ice that had him stuck to the wall, Serena frowned as she noticed the wall continued to remain no matter how much she hammered it with shots. Instead she returned her attention to herself and carefully began removing the gooey aura from herself like using a scalpel. By the time she finished James was on his feet shooting at her while using his shield to defend. Serena was nimbly dodging by rolling and teleporting but it was clear who would win at this pace. Then Serena leapt onto the gooey aura on the floor in order to dodge. However it did not slow her in the least. I glanced at her feet and saw that she was using her aura to repel his. It did not seem to be draining her that quickly and with a nod she vanished appearing behind James. James eyes widened as he felt that sword stab hard into his back sending him forward across the arena. Serena utilized the same technique to prevent the aura from sticking to her and followed with a teleport. She pursued James mercilessly, dodging his strikes and teleporting to his blind spots until finally his aura hit the red and the fight was called.

You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!  
You have leveled up!

It had been a close fight. Serena was barely above the red herself keeping all the gooey aura off herself was quite taxing. Before the next match could begin everyone had to wait for James to clean up his aura because no one could walk properly in the stuff. Serena must have noticed me because she teleported to my side as soon as she was released from her battle.

"Hey" she said.

"Hey" I replied. "Nicely done. I was sure you would lose until you managed to start repelling that aura during the fight at the end there."

"I had it perfectly in hand." She responded succinctly "Sure I was mildly worried the first time but as the fight progressed I was confident I could handle his semblance."

"Sureeeee" I drawled. "You looked pretty panicked every time that stuff covered you."

She crossed her arms and glared at me as I chuckled.

"Did the others lose or win?" She finally asked breaking the glare. I glanced at the monitor in the waiting area showing the other battles progress and looked for Aaron and Jon's name. Normally we would watch each fight but Serena, Jon, and Aaron all had a fight at the same time. Sadly it seemed they had both lost already.

"It seems they lost" I replied

Serena frowned "I figured it would turn out like that. While they had the fastest growth of any fighter I have ever seen it was not enough to close the gap to these practically full blown hunters."

"mhm" I replied sadly. "We will just have to pick up the slack and make sure we make the finals. There is still the team competition after this to determine the best team to tackle the team rounds."

"Quite so! We aren't out of the individuals yet and there is always the team competition. In the meantime I'm starving after that battle and let's get something to eat!" Serena said happily

We moved towards the food stalls and picked some food and chowed down. Considering Aaron and Jon had not come to find us they were probably sulking somewhere about their losses. As we ate, the matches rolled by until finally our opponents had been decided. My next opponent to face is Craven Ironwood and then Serena was facing Octavian Fisk.

"Hmm I wonder if Craven's related to James Ironwood the headmaster/general/military dictator here." I mused.

"Maybe" She chuckled "But I wouldn't let anyone else hear you call the headmaster a military dictator…"

"Mm" I grunted in agreement. This time our matches were at the same time. "Make sure to win and I will see you in the finals."

She nodded "I will. You better make sure _you_ win."

Then we headed off to our different waiting areas and waited for the matches to begin. Then Craven walked in and I gulped.

-The Heir of Ironwood-  
Craven Ironwood  
Level 140

HP: 89051  
MP: 56632  
STR: 205  
VIT: 223  
DEX: 129  
INT: 103  
WIS: 89  
LUK: 0

Well. This was going to be _fun_.


	8. Chapter 8 Ironwood part 2

**Hey again! I have exams this week so I was basically piece mail writing this on my studying breaks.. I still wanted to post this when it was ready and I think I am pretty satisfied. We will see Craven again and technically James Ironwood at the tournament since the headmaster will come to it! Lots of fun rivalry to come!**

* * *

Chapter 8

Craven Ironwood Part 2

* * *

Craven Ironwood is the heir to James Ironwood, the headmaster of Atlas. Apparently James Ironwood married his current wife and had a child shortly after they were married. That boy was trained to be a Hunter since birth and has grown into a fine young man. He is very powerful and has had top grades for his year. He also has an interesting semblance. After touching an object a single time, he can pull or push any object (regardless of weight) towards himself. Apparently there are limits to the dimensions of an object he can move, though. My Observe skill tells an interesting LONG tale about how he tried to move a mountain once and our match was just called before I could read it all. Instead I got into position for the match!

.

I moved down the hallway that led to my entrance into the arena as Craven moved to enter the competitors entrance on the other side of the arena. When I noticed his semblance I had stayed as far away as possible from him. Imagine if he touched me and suddenly I was his rag doll! That image sends shivers down my spine. My plan for the fight is to basically not get touched and FINISH this quick (which is really my strategy every fight) but I think this one fight has (for me) a much stronger motivating factor. As I stood in front of the Iron Gate waiting for it to open so I could go out I received a notification, it says YOU HAVE LEVELED UP!

Well that's neat. Serena maybe just won? It felt too early. Maybe Jon and Aaron were training again. I took this opportunity to glance at my points.

Name: David Gale

Class: The Gamer

Level: 91

HP: 23100+35235

MP: 12100+25700

STR: 251+62

VIT: 201+49

DEX: 251+91

INT: 103+15

WIS: 101+12

LUK: -1

Point: 120

MONEY: 49281 Lien

I considered for a moment what points to put where. I could raise STR and DEX to 300 before the fight began but I needed good skills not more stats. I could raise INT and WIS and it would help my aura strike immensely but against a fighter like Craven who wields two axes I am not sure I will be keeping my distance. VIT is always good but the last skills I received basically just made me tougher...and that's it. Ultimately I decided to raise both STR and DEX over 300 and take on Craven with everything I have. He is, after all, the strongest student at the school I have ever seen. After I placed the points into STR and DEX, I wait for the popups and after a few seconds I received one notification.

[The Path of Mighty Men (Passive & Active) Lv1 EXP:0.00% MP:50000 per strike]

By obtaining a decent level of physical strength you have unlocked the path of Mighty Men before you. Like ancient warriors of old you can fight for days without tiring and your weapons break before your body does. Your body has transcended the limits of ordinary men and Limit Break is now a passive skill that is always enabled.

10% Increase to STR

10% Increase to DEX

10% Increase to VIT

While active all physical and aura based attacks gain a 5000% increase in damage

Fifty thousand MP per hit. Granted that one strike was one strike that hits harder than my entire nine hit combo, Shinobi Kai Kenjutsu, was still quite costly and would leave me completely defenseless. The passive bonus is quite nice though. With limit break being free now and always on I should be able to move extremely fast. I practiced my movements a bit while I waited for the gates to open. Finally the bell rang indicating the gates were raising. I proceeded into the arena. The audience immediately starting screaming as I saw Craven move onto the field. A "Craven, Craven" chant was starting up. I grimaced. The comments flying out of the stands addressed to me were not very friendly. Apparently Craven had a fan club. The announcer announced our names and years with a deafening cheer for Craven and SILENCE for myself. I frowned hard at the clear bias. As we took our positions for battle, I activated all my speed skills and prepped an Aura Strike for the moment the battle began. I also prepared a Flash Step. Then the timer hit 0 and a loud buzzer rang out. I used Aura Strike and let loose a Larger then I remembered Aura Strike at Craven. So I flash stepped behind him and activated Shinobi Kai Kenjutsu. The first hit was blocked narrowly by Craven using his axe in his right hand while his axe in his left hand blocked my Aura Strike. I continued to strike viciously at Craven, tossing in feints and attempting to land a clean hit. He would always nimbly block my strikes then follow up with his own from his second axe. Lacking a second weapon myself I would always sidestep or dodge backwards if I have to.

Sadly, this was not working. As I hit my ninth hit of Shinobi Kai Kenjutsu even my fastest hardest hit was merely shrugged off. I immediately activated it again since I did not really have any other major attacks available to myself. Unfortunately, he parried my next blow hard knocking me backwards slightly and instead of counter attacking he threw his axe at me like a bullet. It was so fast I could not see it coming and it impaled me hard in the chest knocking me backwards into the wall. I tried to recover from that hit but like a machine gun his next axe plowed into me as well. I could feel my aura taking brutal shots to it as I watched my MP drop by 5% each hit. As I tried to use the lull between axe throws to recover I was slammed into the wall again by another axe. I managed to focus on Craven after that last hit only to notice the moment the axe hits me it gets sucked into his hand and pops back towards me slamming into me again. Knowing I could not recover in time to deal with these axes, I tried to flash step out of the way but with my poor posture and limited time I ended up flying across the arena into the other wall head first.

I plucked my head from the wall and glanced at Craven who was now looking at me again with a look of bemusement. He tossed another axe at myself and I flash stepped away narrowly dodging the axe and stopping before I hit the wall again. I was having to use a fairly high level of flash step speed in order to dodge before those axes could hit me. I saw Craven try to find me before he noticed I had appeared at the left wall. He threw another axe at me and I dodged again narrowly. I had always considered using flash step to fight in battle but even now using it without hitting things required perfect posture and precise aura control. Not to mention swinging a sword while flash stepping was practically impossible. The best I could do was place my sword in the object's path and hope it hit.

After a few repeats of this, I could see Craven getting irritated. I had only been running away for a while now because it was taking everything I had to keep dodging. But I think I was getting the hang of repeated flash stepping and gaining a greater slack in how I could flash step without hitting a wall. If limit break had not become a passive, I would never be able to keep this up with the constant MP drain. As it stood, I was able to barely standstill the fight since Flash step really did not require that much MP. I could see Craven also slowly losing aura from all those axe throws. In the slight pause before I saw him decide to try again, I flash stepped to the opposite side of the arena facing away from him. I placed my sword horizontally perpendicular to his body and flash stepped towards him in range that hopefully my sword would hit. I had to use everything to merely keep my grip on the sword but I felt it rip through something as I passed. When I glanced back Craven was on the floor and his aura had taken a decent hit. He was also bleeding from the side of his stomach. Apparently all that force had penetrated his aura. I flash stepped behind him just as he recovered and activated Shinobi Kai Kenjutsu.

Craven managed to block but just as I thought I would be able to hit his left side all of a sudden his axe that had just blocked myself plowed into me hard. Apparently there was not any distance requirement or direction limitation or stance requirement because his axes were basically moving any direction he wanted in a straight line from his body then popped back towards any part of his body and then out again. As I took five strikes in a row while flying through the air, I managed to flash step far to his right the second my body hit the ground. In that short time he had reduced my MP to 40%. I refilled a chunk of it with my HP and proceeded to flash step as I dodged the axes that were now moving even faster than before! Now I could barely flash step as an axe would nick myself. Sometimes as I arrived, his other axe would already be waiting for me at my new location and plow into me. After that I stopped flash stepping to each wall always stopping short but that made me closer to Craven who was roughly in the center of the arena and sending axe bullets at myself. I managed to dodge an axe perfectly and ended in a position for another swing at Craven. I flash stepped towards him and felt my sword slice something again. However when I looked he had somehow managed to block my hit with one of his axes.

I knew I had held back too much that time. Flash step used in an offensive manner is so darn hard to control. I quickly flash stepped and repeated trying to maximize the speed further and further. I would sometimes flash step twice before I went for the attack in order to attempt to land better hits. Sometimes I would get a nice shot on Craven and sometimes he would block. After another minute he was blocking most hits with one axe and trying to attack me as I landed with his other axe. Like a blur I was dancing around the arena using my motion to pause on the wall then rocket at Craven with even more speed. Instead of going for a slash I started trying lunges. I would plow sword first into Craven hard and the only reason I did not stab through was because he had an enormous aura barrier cloaking himself.

After I started landing hits he clearly was using more aura for defense. I saw hit aura drop by a good bit before I distanced myself and went at it again. Craven began to stay in constant movement. He concluded I would not be able to hit him with a lunge at that speed unless he stayed in one place and he was mostly right. Lunges at that speed generally missed even when he stood still. It was hard to control my sword and body at this pace and I frankly just plain missed half the time. So I started swapping between a slash and a lunge as I performed flash step after flash step. Meanwhile I was missing most of the time and then dodging rapidly as an axe trailed after myself. The axes were getting faster as well. Finally I knew I needed to change something and quick. We were both in the yellow on MP and aura and I was barely maintaining my MP despite those solid axe blows by supplementing it with my HP regeneration.

I could tell however that the cut I made to Craven was slowly getting worse. All those swift movements were forcing him to move even faster and my occasional nick around the same area was no doubt causing him discomfort. Despite this the guy was recovering from hits and dodges faster and faster. Most of the time when I missed Craven tossed an axe in my back. Finally I could see how I was going to lose this fight. Sure it might be close but unless I tried anything else this fight was over. With this in mind I starting using Aura Strike whenever I paused and before I flash stepped again. The result was less than I hoped for but was enough that I could land more hits with my aura strikes again. After around 20 times of performing the action I heard a ding. A SKILL HAS BEEN CREATED THROUGH ACTION! Instantly I felt my mind grasp a few concepts through the combo I had been using. I knew how to swing my sword in the middle of a flash step and use an aura strike at the same time. Clearly the skill handled this for me but I immediately used it to great effect. I started flash striking as the name appeared in my mind and while I was still moving the aura would leap from my sword pointed at Craven and slice at him. I gauged the MP drain and noticed it was basically double the cost of flash step and aura strike combined but it seemed to do great work on Craven when it hit. The distance attack that Flash Strike released also moved at the same speed I did which was significantly faster than my Aura Strike.

Now Craven was not able to dodge practically any of the flash strikes and my occasional slashes using flash step. He had been reduced to blocking and his aura tanking with all the hits. However, with that being his single focus, he was barely hanging on or so I thought until suddenly the space I had been passing through with a flash step smacked me so hard I was slammed in the wall and bounced off it rolling several feet. I had no clue what happened until I glanced at Craven and saw what looked like a chainsaw of axes spinning my direction. He had abandoned any pretense of blocking and defense and was focusing on using his axes rapid movements to attack me wherever I was even if I was mid flash step. I managed to flash step away only to see him turn his hand as it followed me like a laser beam being shot from a cannon destroying everything in its path. After observing a moment I was about to resume this on the notion he could not block me again when I saw his hands move in front of where he imagined I would be. With I jerk I felt my legs fly under myself as I slammed into the wall. I had to force my MP to stay above the red with the huge hit I had just taken. Then I flash stepped away fast as another axe slammed into the wall I had just been against. I immediately flash stepped directly behind Craven before his eyes could catch up to my location and then reverse flash striked him back and lunged at him simultaneously. I managed to knock him far enough off balance that he stumbled forward and I kept flash stepping into his back as I lunged at him. I felt his aura cracking under the pressure as I drove him forward until finally he was in the wall and my katana pierced through his aura and I felt it pierce his chest.

I heard the match get called immediately as I backed off. While training accidents happened when you were being trained as a killing machine designed to slay Grimm, it was rare since aura was so good at shielding us. However when it came to matches if you caught someone just right at the wrong level of aura remaining you could deplete it in one go and pierce it. That was what had happened to Craven. He had focused on assault and gave up on defense and that choice had bitten him in the chest. The arena was completely silent comprised of what I assumed was the Craven fan club. They were clearly stunned into silence. Here a first year and notably a strong first year had just defeated their idol. Medics rushed the field and took Craven away, working to stop the bleeding and save his life. I optimistically did not think where I had hit him would be life threatening with Atlas' advanced medical equipment and finally the referee came out and raised my hand in victory. The atmosphere was still one of disbelief and being silently stunned. Not many seemed able to clap. I had taken one more step closer to being the victor of this tournament. If Craven could not stop me, I darn well was not going to let myself lose to anyone else.

* * *

 **Hope you guys liked it! Technically hes still in the group stages so it is far from over but after that battle hes getting cocky! I'm setting it up that on average hunters need to be that fast otherwise whats the point of super powered bodies with ultra awesome aura and supernatural powers?**

 **Also I had a friend proof read it instead of handling it myself since i'm swamped with studying. Hopefully that means the quality went up! If it did i'll keep having it proof read.**


	9. Chapter 9 Game Changer

A/N Hey guys it been a while. I've been super busy with school and the works. I also wanted to take a moment and answer all the review questions. If you have a question you want to ask or even a suggestion feel free to leave a review.

Ddragon21- There are lots more Grimm variation to come. The Grimm we see in the show are only what we see from Ruby's perspective and she doesn't travel much. I imagine there are probably 50 more types at least and they probably get deadlier by the minute as you leave populated hunter protected areas.

Also about David getting a special attack. Eventually. But special attacks are the type of thing you see a max level character have. Sure hes going to have preferences for a while and right now its high speed combat but eventually he'll switch into other things and I hope it comes across as fun.

I also wanted to note speed. I decided basically to have 'normal' trained warrior speed(before aura) be what a base hunter with aura would have. That means with David learning all these speed techniques he has to be really really fast otherwise it wouldn't be as fun for myself to write.

Also you mentioned barriers/instant dungeons for training like from The Gamer. I'm heavily on the fence about it. I want all the Gamer guru stuff to fit RWBY lore and to make that happen... *shrug*

This means Ruby is going to be wicked fast. How fast? Dunno yet. But her semblance is speed and that means as fast as she darn well wants.

kadehex Yep he isn't going to use the gun on his sword ever. Maybe. Probably not I mean it might come up one day... But in the mean time no new sword unless he starts crafting and i'm not sure if or when he'll do that... Or maybe a sword will drop from a boss Grimm some day? It's in my plans if he ever fights Grimm again...

Gostrow Thanks! I try to do high speed combat and make it intense. Its probably what I enjoy most about writing this fanfiction.

and another general thank you to all my other reviewers!

On a final note a big Thank You to Furybolt for helping be my Beta for this chapter. He had a bunch of great ideas to make the formatting better and I think it improved the readability a good bit!

Also I uploaded the wrong version the first time- woops.. This is now the right version.

* * *

Chapter 9 Game Changer

* * *

Chapter 9 Game Changer

After the fight was finished I left the arena and collapsed on the bench outside to rest.

Even if my HP/MP said full, my body will still get tired like a regular person. The gamer aspect causes a strange blend between feeling fit but also feeling weary.

It was only a short while before I felt something poking my side. I looked up to see a grinning Serena staring at me poking me with her sword hilt.

"What" I grumbled.

"You looked so peaceful there I had to wake you up."

I felt a vein bulge and huffed.

"I take it your good mood meant you won?"

"Of Course." She responded still grinning

"Still why are you THAT excited?" I responded pointing a finger at her

"Cause it was the guy who had mocked me the first day we arrived and said I'd never beat him in a million years. It felt so darn good to make him eat those words."

I made a mental note to never ever get on Serena's grudge list since she apparently holds those suckers hard.

"Well, it seems the third round won't be for several hours," Serena stated as a matter of fact.

"It seems all the fights besides us blew up parts of the arena. They are working on repairing them so the tournament can continue."

"Hmm… I think I left a pretty decent hole in the wall at our arena too. Still shouldn't take that long to fix it." I mused.

"Well… My fight left the arena intact, But my opponent… I played with him for over twenty minutes striking places that his aura was covering poorly and made sure he would remember me tomorrow. It was the least I could do in exchange for his cruel words."

I shivered slightly at the mental torture she had just inflicted on that student.

"Well at least on the bright side I can go back to sleep," I stated as I laid back down.

"Are you sure that's a good idea? This is a public space after all." She stated.

"Meh, it is probably fine."

Serena simply stared at him like he was an idiot. "You realize you just beat The Craven of The Craven Fan Club into the ground and they are going to want some payback right?"

I looked up at her. Frowned deeply "No… I did not realize that. Why is he so popular?"

"You really have no idea who Craven is?"

"All I know is he is James Ironwoods son."

"Well, Craven is super popular in the school. Not only is he James Ironwood's son, but he is also very powerful as a hunter, he has also been featured on several magazines in the city and is also the favorite to win the tournament."

I whistled loudly "Ok I guess that makes me the favorite to win now?"

"Not technically because of this being the preliminary rounds I hear that the headmaster often forces his son to hold back quite a bit in his fights. I doubt you have seen his best abilities yet."

"Seriously? What else could he possibly have?"

Serena shrugged and started to walk away. "You comin?" She called over her shoulder.

"Ya, I'm comin." I grudgingly walked after her. I really did not want to deal with crazy fan club members.

Serena and I swiftly returned to our room to sleep. The moment I hit the room I was on the bed asleep but not before activating Field. Leaving skills on while I slept was something new I'd managed to gain as a skill after many repeated attempts. I got the idea from some fantasy books I had read and figured with my semblance, in theory, it should allow me to leave skills on while I slept.

After probably an hour something very bad happened and Field immediately woke me up. The skill called 'Sleep Readiness' basically prioritizes information and if anything is dangerous it immediately wakes me up. It is a passive skill and technically does this even if I do not sleep, but Field naturally amplifies 'Sleep Readiness' abilities in a harmonious nature.

In this case, the reason it woke me was because a canister shaped object that seemed like a grenade rolled through the door with no pin inside it. Naturally that meant it was going to explode. A massive amount of adrenaline shot through my system and my eyes popped open.

My skill told me what was happening and I immediately activated my aura and dived at Serena as I flipped my bed into a makeshift shield. I figured any moron would count before rolling a grenade into the room and trying to pick it up would be about as smart as placing my hand into a blast furnace. At this point around a second had passed.

I grabbed Serena scooping her with one arm. Then I flash stepped out the window. Now the dorm building we are in is actually several stories and we are on the fifth floor. Thankfully Serena was awake by this point as I did not exactly have a fabulous landing strategy for us both. She was probably about to scream what the heck was I doing but then our room exploded. Shards of glass flew outwards at us and then suddenly I found us on the ground and Serena was breathing hard.

"Well, that's one way to land," I said cheerfully as if we hadn't nearly been blown up by a grenade.

"What was that!?"

"All I know is one moment I was sleeping the next my abilities woke me up because a grenade was in our room without a pin in it."

"How did it even get there!?"

"Maybe we should ask them?" I gestured up at our now burning room and saw two people looking out. "Somehow I do not think their motives are peaceful."

Serena gave me an 'are you serious look' and vanished. I saw her up there attacking those people and I used flash step to leap to my room.

The flames had already been put out by the fire suppression system and the attackers were trying to hit Serena who had somehow obtained her sword by this point and was brutally attacking them. Blood was flying. I wasn't too worried since their levels were all between 70 and 120 and there was only six of them. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to check their semblances otherwise I would have known the fires hadn't gone out naturally. I learned that when the weakest one released forth the most intense burst of flames I had ever felt. I quickly flash striked out of the flames and watched my abilities secondary benefit, the mobile ranged attack, slam the pyromancer in the face. Apparently his aura couldn't handle it and his nose seemed to cave in.

His buddy to his right yelled in anguish or rage I wasn't really sure which and charged me. I dodged a punch which looked pretty nasty as he wore some mean looking gauntlets and nimbly rolled right. I grabbed my sword that I located through 'Field' as I completed my roll. Then the level 120 took a swipe at me with his weapon as I recovered. He used a mace weapon and I deflected it with my sword hilt while I sliced his chest. With all my stacking attack skills, it penetrated his aura and cut him cleanly. He dropped like a rock, but I didn't have time to celebrate as the flame user renewed his assault and supported his gauntlet wielding friend. The fire unintentionally struck all my school books that had somehow survived the grenades and I saw red. all that lost money…

"You Fiend! I screamed," Then I vanished in another flash strike. The ranged attack struck the gauntlet wielder across the back and I saw blood spurt. The movement brought my sword through the fire user as I passed him. He went down pretty hard as I saw blood seeping from his side wound. The gauntlet user was about to reach his feet again when I flash stepped over to him and stabbed him in both legs. His aura defense was crud because I barely felt it repel my sword before I penetrated. I then knocked him out cold.

By the time I was finished, Serena had finished her three as well. I took a deep breath and looked around. The room was clearly uninhabitable now. Basically everything had been destroyed. I did manage to salvage my scroll but Serena's was not recoverable. At this point, I was getting angry again.

"Seriously?! It's been three minutes since the explosion where are the stupid moron teachers that should be keeping better tabs on their serial killer students!?" I raged

Serena just shrugged and looked depressed. I went over to the still open door and looked out. A few students were still around and had watched the fight, but they left when I came out. I made sure to memorize the names in case it became important later…

"Freaking cowards!" I called at them as they left. Then I called the headmaster's office on my scroll and explained what had happened. The secretary hung up on me as she laughed. I called her back. When she picked up I directed the scrolls video towards the bleeding students and the black room and kicked one. I was still running quite hot and being hung up on didn't help me calm down.

"What did you do?!" The secretary screamed.

"I already freaking told you! Get the headmaster if you are too stupid to do anything!' I shouted back turning the screen around to me as I glared at her. She hung up again and I couldn't reach their office anymore. I hoped that was a good thing…

A few minutes later I heard footsteps sprinting down the hall. During the time I had waited, I bandaged the still bleeding students so they wouldn't die on me. The last thing I wanted was a murder investigation. I walked out of the door to greet them and saw a few teachers. I greeted them openly until one of them did something and appeared in front of me and popped me in the chin hard enough that I was heavily dazed. The daze was quickly lessened thanks to my semblance, but it still cost me at least a second of awareness. During this time I was punched in the gut so hard, I felt my mouth fill with blood and I slumped forward. All the damage was quickly removed as my HP bar drained and I activated my aura. Then I felt an iron force clamp down on myself and I collapsed to the ground. I was covered in some sort of iron bindings.

"What are you doi-!" Serena was asking until she was similarly dispatched except her chin shot cleanly knocked her out.

"What are you doing?! We never even attacked you! We were the ones attacked!" I shouted angrily.

"Silence!" a man with the name Arnold floating over his head shouted. "We received the report directly from the headmaster's office that a student had attacked and nearly killed several other students."

"What?! I called them because no one was coming after someone BLEW UP OUR ROOM! We fought them for several minutes and no one STILL came!" I rebutted.

At this point, my mouth was firmly covered by some sort of iron plate. This did not stop me from glaring at him intensely. The remaining teachers quickly took the hurt students away and then escorted us through the school to the headmasters office.

The headmaster was not there yet. Therefore, they placed us in the room and only one teacher, Arnold, remained. After a while, another teacher arrived with the handcuffs that blocked semblances and aura. He placed it on us and it was like a clamp was placed over my body. Interestingly a ding appeared indicating a status effect debuff that said it reduces aura skills effectiveness by 75%. By this point, Serena awoke with some… Creative language and was promptly silenced with iron over the mouth like myself. And so we waited about an hour later James Ironwood walked in.

-Defender of Atlas-  
James Ironwood  
Level ?

Naturally I was relieved. If anyone could sort this out he would and if he wouldn't I would break these handcuffs and get me and Serena out of here somehow…

"Well, this was not how I wanted my day to end. When I imagined returning to my office after that horrendous meeting that discussed the details for the tournament I did not imagine coming back to find the man who defeated my son had assaulted six other students."

Then I mumbled something back still gagged.

"Oh yes. Arnold release their restraints please."

Arnold immediately did so and I was able to speak.

"Wait. You think we assaulted them!? They attacked us! It was our room!" I stated angrily

"That's not what they said. They said that you had made a large explosion sound and when they came to investigate you attacked them viciously. Their pyromancer ended up burning the room with his fires creating all the black we see after you caved his nose in."

I just sat there with my mouth hanging open. We had completely defended ourselves and they were still trying to frame us even now?

"That is not true," I stated. I then told the sequence of events from my perspective and informed him of exactly what happened. His face remained impassive the whole time and did not interrupt me.

After I was finished he responded "Well considering how neither of you is wearing combat attire I would assume that you were not planning to lure them as they suggested. However, despite this I cannot prove either story as the dorm was strangely void of witnesses."

I then gave him the names of those I saw watching and he said he would have one of the teachers look into it. It didn't take long to talk to them via scroll and they claimed they were nowhere near my room at the time. This was shaping up to be a masterful assassination attempt… Even more interestingly the cameras in the hallways were somehow blotted out during the attack.

At this James said, "Since the cameras were disabled it is quite clear now that a semblance was at work. Apparently it merely affected hallways in specific sequences and that seems to indicate movement. To be honest, there are many students with semblances who can block security cameras and it would be challenging to find the culprit. "

Before I could respond his secretary entered and told him he had a phone call that was urgent.

"I'll return shortly," He said and then departed.

Serena and I discussed our options for a while and we really just waited. Just as my patience was about to run out James finally returned.

"Well, all charges have been dropped by the families."

"...Why would they drop charges for attacking us? What if I want to press charges against them?" I asked

"I wouldn't do that… Those families are quite powerful and the only reason they dropped it in the first place is because I assured them that you would be removed from the school. Arnold, can you leave us now?"

Arnold nodded and then left the room.

"What's this about?" I asked.

"I discovered just now after a call from Serena's father, that the parents of those families had just lost a bit of money in a financial transaction because of him. Apparently he got one up on them and they were not pleased. Naturally I called them and mentioned that based on this and the circumstantial nature of events pressing charges would be disastrous and would force many things to light. Sadly they were quite adamant and I decided to compromise if I had both of you removed from the school. They readily agreed to this and here we are."

I just stared at him in disbelief. He had basically just sided completely with them and screwed us.

"However I only agreed because I do not believe it is safe in Atlas for either of you anymore. Apparently your heritage has come to light David and they were trying to have you removed just as much as Serena for being her father's daughter. I also have noticed some… Less than desirable qualities from some of my teachers that allowed their plan to come to pass. It has brought to light many things I have to work on in order to resolve this problem. My plan, therefore, is to have both of you sent to Vale. My friend is running the Academy, Beacon, there called Ozpin. You will be able to live there and train to become Hunters and Huntresses and then return after you graduate if you still wish to do so. This is the best I can do to ensure your safety at this time."

Part of me wanted to say no and stay here. Then the next group that attacked me I would end permanently and then see how those 'families' like it. But I knew that the moment I killed a student that was it for me. Completely regardless of the situation I would probably be thrown out or worse jailed.

"What about the rest of my team?" I asked solemnly

"I would recommend they also go to vale… Being affiliated with you will do them no favors and they won't even have a proper team for backup until next year. Besides you will need a team once you reach Beacon."

I nodded sagely. It would be best to have them along since we could maintain our previous training and wouldn't have to start over. But ultimately the decision rests with them.

"That is probably for the best." I agreed.

"Gather whatever remains of your things and otherwise group with your team and purchase what you require for the trip. Talk with Aaron and Jon and let me know if they are onboard with going to Beacon. Officially you would all be exchange students at beacon."

The only issue I saw is that if we are exchange students what about the Vytal festival? I still wanted to compete in it and I would hate for this to prevent that.

"Can we still compete in the Vytal festival for Beacon even if we are exchange students?" I queried

"Of course!" He confirmed "Your regular Beacon students with the 'exchange' label."

With that worry resolved. I couldn't think of anything else that was wrong besides the whole we were nearly assassinated earlier today bit.

"Thank you so much. If you hadn't come up with a solution here I'm not really sure what I would have been forced to do because I certainly wasn't going to jail for self-defense…"

He laughed a bit at that "Are you saying you thought you could have escaped from full-fledged hunters?"

"Naturally" I replied, "I'm a long distance speed type and Serena's a teleporter. Unless you have someone fast on hand I'm confident our running skills are up to the task."

"I see" he replied, "Yes most of my teachers have confinement and destruction based semblances. We do have quite the fast teacher with a speed semblance though. He would probably give you a run for your money."

"I'll race him the next time I come back then. I plan on being the fastest I can possibly be despite not having a speed semblance."

I wasn't mentioning the fact that my semblance lets me combine strength and speed in ways only masters could and that it was undoubtedly quite unfair to compare me with one particular type of hunter exclusively. Although Craven basically had me beat on all fronts until I managed to develop 'Flash Strike' mid-fight. So maybe I am not that unusual after all.

"Thank you again and I hope to see you at the Festival," I said.

"Of course. I will be there. I represent Atlas at the Festival after all."

After that, we briefly discussed minor details and he gave us the necessary paperwork. He also assisted with getting a new scroll for Serena which was a huge relief since Atlas uses them for everything.

"I wish you luck at the Festival. While I will always be rooting for my son foremost, I wish you could also prove that you are fine Hunters and Huntresses at the Festival and make the Atlas families regret this decision."

After that I thanked him again and off we went. Aaron and Jon had been training at the facility this whole time. Serena and I explained what had happened to us and they were both in complete shock and thought we were pulling a prank.

So we showed them the room. Their jaws dropped and well, they cried. Their precious 'picture books' were completely lost. After that, they were happy to listen and I explained what had happened to us and what the results were.

"So.," Jon said "Beacon eh? Might be fun. Certainly safer and we'd actually have a team name and a real shot at going somewhere. The whole lack of proper instruction here has been grating on my nerves for ages."

Besides that fact, that might have been the most Jon had ever spoken in our presence I was slightly shocked how well they were taking this.

"Soooo. Beacon? Well, we were going there anyways! Now it's just much sooner!" David piped in cheerfully.

"Thanks, guys… I know this is largely my fault or rather my family's fault, but I really appreciate that you all are willing to simply uproot and move." Serena stated sincerely

"Don't mention it" Aaron responded "We had a bad deal here anyways and it's largely David's fault for beating Craven as well. Not like there's anything left in this room to uproot either. Besides I couldn't get a single girl to look my way here! I'm hoping for much better at beacon."

The rest of us looked at him dryly and pretended he didn't exist as we discussed our plans and looked for what could be salvaged. Which was unsurprisingly very little. Thus shopping we went!

It took us awhile since we basically had to repurchase our entire wardrobe and other essentials. Serena apparently utilized her semblance to maximum effect here as she was teleporting from store to store. We didn't even try to keep up. After we were finished we returned to the Academy and the headmaster had prepared a temporary room for us. The plan was to leave on the soonest boat to vale in two days.

The two days passed slowly. We didn't train and we didn't split up or attend classes. I figured after everything the school owed me and I raided the library taking all the copies of books they could easily replace.

I decided to test if my semblance would allow my allies to learn from skill books just by being partied with myself and it turned out to be true. Apparently while partied my semblance affected them a fair bit. There wasn't much they were interested in learning except the base swiftness skills that they had no knowledge of. Flesh step wasn't useful for Serena and the twins didn't think it fit their style.

After that, the remaining time passed swiftly until we were on the boat. I had already contacted my mom and everyone else likewise had informed their parents. Everyone was perfectly fine with it especially since Beacon was a prestigious school and going there only increased our chances. I knew we had a long journey ahead of us. It takes roughly three days to reach vale using this boat and despite knowing the safer routes sometimes the Grimm attack anyways. That is why a hunter or several always on a boat depending on the route being taken.

* * *

Well that's it! Thanks for reading! Be sure to review! The more reviews the more motivated it makes me to write faster.


End file.
